Collared
by Deranged Black Kitten
Summary: His captor never kept a calendar in sight, but Shawn knew it had been several months. He had first been kidnapped- 'Dog-napped,' his mind snorted in amusement before he mentally berated himself. He shouldn't be joking about this.
1. Chapter 1

_Hi everyone. Yeah, I know, there are so many things I should be updating instead of writing this new fic, but the plot bunny attacked me in the night, quite viciously as I was about to go to bed, and I just had to write this while I still had the inspiration for it. A lot of story ideas I come up with never get this far because after a day or two, I think to myself: Naw, that's a stupid idea. Forget it._

_Anyway, this story will eventually be a crossover (not saying with what quite yet cause that'll spoil things), possibly by chapter three. It's not slash this time and it's more gen than it is het. First chapter is told from Shawn's perspective, but not first person. This story is rated for violence and general mind-fuckery. (man, first Dark Passenger, and now this story? There's gotta something wrong with me.) Seriously guys, I don't know **what** I was thinking when I came up with this one. You've been warned. Enjoy!_

Disclaimer: I don't own Psych, don't sue me.

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**Chapter One**

Shawn's feet pounded against the ground as he ran, traveling as quickly as he could across uneven terrain. Branches and underbrush clawed at him, trying to hamper his escape, leaving behind small scratches that he paid no mind to. He didn't have the time to stop and focus or whine about something so menial (_No, not whine. He doesn't _whine!), not when he could hear the pounding crunch of footsteps faintly in the distance, slowly growing louder as they drew closer.

The ground was still damp from a recent rain, and occasionally he would slip; not enough to actually fall over, but enough to slow his progress, and those few precious seconds he spent slipping on wet leaves were seconds he couldn't spare. The pounding of footsteps behind him grew louder, getting closer, and Shawn growled at his own clumsiness (_No, no, he doesn't growl._ People _don't growl. They yell and they scream and they speak in a low, angry voice, but they do not growl!_) He just wasn't fast enough, not against this man, and he didn't have enough time, he _never_ had enough time, to escape, to find help, to leave this man and his cabin far behind.

A shot rang out from behind him, sounding deafening in the quiet forest surroundings, and as a stinging pain bit into his back, Shawn knew it was all over. The stinging sensation was quickly numbed as a pins and needles feeling spread across his back. Another shot rang out, this time hitting his leg. As his leg went numb, his run deteriorated into a slow, stumbling trot. Logic told him it was pointless to keep going and that he might as well sit down and wait to be retrieved before he fell down on top of the tranquilizer darts and jammed them in even further. His so-called 'escape' was so far past hopeless that the man behind him wouldn't even bother shooting anymore tranq darts at him. In fact, if he listened closely, he could hear that the man was no longer running but was walking calmly along as if they were taking a nice stroll through the forest.

Shawn and logic never agreed on too much in the past though, and as his mind screamed, '_Run! Run! Get away!'_, he figured _why start now?_ However, as much as he wanted to keep running, his legs gave out from beneath him and he collapsed in a heap on the ground; thankfully on his stomach, not his back with the dart still stuck in it. He lay limp on the ground, panting heavily (_Not panting,_ breathing,_ breathing heavily_). Only a few minutes passed before he could hear the sound of footsteps approach him.

The owner of the footsteps chuckled as he knelt down next to Shawn. Patting the psychic on the head, the man said, "You did better this time, mutt. Didn't run in a straight line like a right moron. You must be learning from your mistakes. Pretty impressive!" the man chuckled again. "Or maybe I'm just training you right."

A growl escaped Shawn's throat before he could stop himself.

"Now, don't be like that," the man scolded. "or I'll have to take your food away again. And here I was thinking about rewarding you when we get back with something tasty."

"No," Shawn whispered, inwardly hating the man kneeling over him and hating himself for begging (_Not begging! Pleading!_). "No, please, I'll be good."

"Aww," the man cooed as he stroked a hand down Shawn's back before plucking the tranq dart out and tossing it to the side. "Is that a whine of apology?"

Shawn was silent, because he refused, absolutely _refused_ to whine for this man. He didn't _whine!_ He wasn't-

"No?" the man prodded. "Alright. Guess I'll have to save those treats for another time when you're-"

Shawn whined. He actually whined and prodded his head against the man's leg, just because he knew it would make his captor happy, and if his captor was happy, then Shawn was happy... The lowest form of happiness one could possibly be. What was left of Shawn's pride shriveled up and died.

"Good boy," the man said, patting Shawn on the head again. "We do a couple more trial runs like this and I think you'll be ready."

Ready for what, Shawn didn't know, and he had a feeling that he didn't want to know. Shawn could hear a slight jingling above him as the man pulled out a leash and locked it onto the thick leather collar wrapped around the psychic's neck. Standing up, the man tugged at the leash and Shawn suppressed a cough at the rough treatment.

Making a clicking noise with his mouth, the man tugged on the leash a few more times before saying, "C'mon, Ribbon, I ain't about to drag your dead weight all the way back to the cabin. I'll leave you chained up out here if I have to."

Resisting the urge to snarl, '_My name isn't 'Ribbon', it's Shawn, you sick freak!_' (_but not snarl, because he doesn't snarl_), Shawn pulled the last dart out of his leg before shakily getting to his feet.

He still remembered the last time his captor made that threat. At the time, Shawn thought it sounded like a good idea; perhaps it would give him another chance to escape. So he had stayed laying on the ground and the man had dragged him a few yards, practically choking him the whole time, before giving up and leaving Shawn chained to a tree for the night. Shawn had struggled with the leash for a good couple of hours after his captor left, but one end was locked up to his collar, the other end was bolt-locked to a sturdy tree, and the leash itself was a link of chains wrapped up in thickly woven fabric. When he'd failed to free himself, Shawn had yelled for help until his voice gave out on him and nobody ever came. As the sun had set, it grew steadily colder and Shawn spent the rest of the night flinching at every nearby rustle of the leaves or snapping of the twigs littering the forest floor. Come morning, when the man finally returned to collect him, Shawn felt nearly hypothermic and he all-too-complacently followed the man back to the cabin where it was warm.

Feeling sluggish from the darts, Shawn stumbled the rest of his way back to the cabin and had to be tugged in the right direction more than once. When they finally reached the cabin, the man led Shawn over to the bolted down cage where he spent most of his free time locked up. He paused before the open door of the cage, like he always did, and listened to his mind scream at him, asking him why he didn't fight back, why he didn't struggle against being put in that cage. He had his hands free. He could punch and scratch and try to fight this man, so why didn't he? There was a time when he used to, so why didn't he now?

Perhaps it was logic working with him for once, or perhaps it was just exhaustion, but he knew from past experience that even at the top of his game, his captor could easily overpower him. With whatever tranquilizer the man used on him in his system, there was just no way he would win in a fight. After running for so long that day, he was just too tired.

'_Besides,_' he thought as he crawled into his cage that was only tall enough to sit up in, '_I really want that treat._'

He remembered a time in the past when a delicious treat would be a pineapple smoothie, or something pineapple related. Now though, a truly delicious treat would be anything that could be considered people food (_Don't say it like that! You _are_ a person. It's not 'people' food, it's just _food!). As for the treats his captor actually gave him when he was being good...

"Your pop-pop's got something really special for you tonight," the man said cheerfully as he grabbed Shawn's empty plastic food dish out of the cage before closing and locking the door. Walking over to the fridge, the man pulled out what looked like a small tubbaware container. Without even cleaning the residue left over from Shawn's previous meal off the plastic dish, the man peeled off the seal from the small plastic container and dumped its contents into the food dish. Bringing it back over, the man slid the food dish in through a slot at the bottom of the cage.

Shawn stared down into the bowl at the fresh-looking chunks of meat and vegetables and rice all mixed together in a gravy-like substance. His mouth watered at the smell of it and he brought the bowl close to his face with one hand and shoveled the food into his mouth with the other. He liked to pretend that it was a cold casserole that he was eating, only not as good, but the truth or the matter was that he was eating gourmet dog food. Most people would cringe at the thought, but for him, it was as close to people food (_food, just regular food_) as he was going to get and it was so much better than dry dog food or the wet stuff that looked like brown mush.

'_I'm not a dog,_' he repeated over and over in his head as he did every time he ate the dog food. '_I'm not. I'm a person. A human being. Not a dog._'

He didn't really know how long he had been trapped like this, being held captive by a man that treated him like a dog. His captor never kept a calendar in sight, but Shawn knew it had been several months. He had first been kidnapped-

'_Dog-napped,_' his mind snorted in amusement before he mentally berated himself. He shouldn't be joking about this.

He had been taken during the beginning of spring. Everything had been in bloom, and while trapped at this cabin in the middle of who-knows-where, he had experienced the warmth of summer and the gradually approaching chill of fall. It now grew quite cold out at night, as he had learned the hard way when he was chained up outside that one time, so he figured it was either the middle of fall or sometime in the winter. That was a long time to be treated like a dog for, and as much as he would say to himself that he wasn't a dog, he sometimes felt like he was slipping up and forgetting.

'This wasn't supposed to happen,' he supposed he would say, or at least say something like that, to someone who wanted to hear the whole story from the beginning.

Although saying 'ruff ruff' would probably sum things up pretty well at this point.

Shawn held back a hysterical laugh even though this wasn't something to laugh or joke about. He shouldn't even be thinking, let alone saying, 'ruff ruff' or anything else that's equivalent to a dog's bark.

'_Because I'm not a dog,_' he reminded himself.

He hadn't even been working on a case when he had been taken. It had actually been a pretty slow month. He and Gus were getting low on money though, so Shawn had gone sniffing around the station for a case (_Not sniffing. Dog's go sniffing and he is not a dog. He was snooping, not to be confused with Snoopy the dog._). There hadn't even been a case for him to work on there either, so with no better options, Shawn went looking through the cold case files. He came across a missing person's case, and even though the missing person had been missing for eight years, he still decided to look into it. He was always up for a challenge. Understandably, there weren't too many leads on it, and he barely even had a chance to look into the leads he _did_ have on it before Cruella De Vil's ex-husband had him drugged up, collared, and shoved into a crate in the backseat of a van.

'_Except I'm not a Dalmatian,_' Shawn thought absentmindedly before suddenly shaking his head and thinking, '_A dog! I'm not a dog!_'

He set down the food dish and shuffled to the back corner or his cage where a large pillow lay.

'_Not a dog. Not a dog,_' he repeated to himself as he curled up on his side.

At first, he had fought the man who insisted on being called 'master' or 'pop-pop.' From his cage, he tried talking sense into the man, he tried manipulating the man with words, and when that didn't work, he found himself yelling and screaming at his captor. It was a long and exhausting one-sided verbal battle in which the man would only respond with, "You're not going to get any food until you shut up," and "Quit your barking!" (a response that confused him up until the first time he needed to use the bathroom and had to be walked outside via leash with his hands bound in front of him and his ankles cuffed with only enough room to walk, past a perfectly functioning bathroom inside, and told to go in the bushes).

Eventually, Shawn gave in and shut up. He was just too hungry to yell anymore. After a couple of condescending words about how much of a "good boy" he was being, the man pulled out a plastic dish, much like the one already in his cage that contained water, poured some dry dog food into it and slid it through a slot at the bottom of the cage.

"I'm not a dog," Shawn had said. "How about something edible? Maybe something with pineapple in it?"

"Aren't you so cute? Yipping like you're people," the man had said, grinning.

"I _am_ a person," Shawn had fumed, getting tired of saying it. "Not a dog, a person. Hence the opposable thumbs and my lack of tail and fur-"

He had started to babble and before he could stop himself, he was insulting the crazy man and the insults continued to get more and more vicious until, it seemed, the man had had enough. Suddenly Shawn was being dragged out of the cage with more strength than he expected from the man and was pinned down to the ground and beaten with a belt, all the while being called a "bad dog." He was soon shoved back into the cage and the dog food was taken away. As much as he hated to admit it, for the week following his punishment, he was a lot more obedient, and he was so hungry by the time the man put the dog food back into his cage that he ate it all.

Unfortunately for him, the dog food was drugged and during the hours that he was a drooling puddle of mush, the man would climb into the cage and pet him on the head, telling him what a good dog he was being; what a good dog 'Ribbon' was being. Shawn wasn't sure why the man felt the need to re-name him, and why, out of all the dog names there were out there, he had chosen _Ribbon._ Shawn could think of plenty of other names that were better suited for him than 'Ribbon,' which totally sounded like a girl's name.

And then he had to remind himself that his name was Shawn, that he was not a dog and that he didn't need to be renamed.

When Shawn's bruises began to heal, he became his usual difficult self again, but it wasn't long before he found himself on the receiving end of the man's belt, being called a "bad dog" and that the man "needed to nip this bad habit in the bud."

This cycle seemed to repeat over and over again. He'd behave and stay quite and eventually get his food privileges back. He'd avoid the dog food for as long as possible until he couldn't stand the hunger anymore, and then hed be drugged up to the gills on the floor of his cage and try to ignore the man petting him and calling him a "good dog." He'd slowly gain his confidence back, step out of line again, and find himself being punished with the man's belt again. This all would happen over and over again, and he wasn't sure how many times it had happened or when things began to change, but at some point, he just stopped talking back, he stopped being disobedient and doing things that would get him hit with the belt. He had wondered many times what his friends and family were currently doing, if they were close to finding him or had given up due to a lack of leads. He supposed the day he stopped being disobedient was the day he stopped believing that someone would magically swoop in and save him.

Some time had passed before Shawn's captor seemed satisfied that he wasn't going to act out anymore. The first time that the man gave Shawn a bowl of the gourmet dog food as reward for being such a good dog was the first time that he took Shawn out of the cage on a leash without any other restraints. He didn't feel at all woozy like he usually did after eating the dog food, and with the leash being held by his captor being his only restraint, Shawn's thoughts immediately jumped to him escaping.

Yet... he didn't.

He was suspicious and confused by his newfound freedom and he didn't really know how to react. His mind kept telling him to run, run, run, but he was... a little afraid of what might happen if he tried anything. If he tried to run, he would most likely fail, and then what would the man do to him? He didn't know how far the forest around the cabin ran. He could likely be running to his death. Plus, he didn't know his way around. Even if civilization was fairly close, he could easily get lost in the forest and his captor would most likely find him before he found anyone else that could help him.

So Shawn did nothing, and let the man walk him around the yard on the leash. It was apparently the right thing to do because the man was a lot nicer to him after that. Shawn was fed the gourmet dog food more often and his food wasn't always drugged. The man eventually brought Shawn a large pillow to sleep on in his cage. Granted, it was a dog pillow bed, but it was much more comfortable to sleep on than the cabin's cold, wood floor.

Then one day, when the man brought Shawn outside for the usual walk around the yard, he unlocked the leash from Shawn's collar and told the psychic to run. For a moment, Shawn simply stood there, confused and wondering if this was some sort of trap.

"What are you waiting for, mutt? Run!" the man snapped.

Shawn took off into the forest, his heart thundering in his chest. For a moment, he thought he was free. He thought the man had a change of heart and was letting him go. Shawn thought of all the people he would get to see again, and all the delicious food he'd get to taste again.

And then his captor came after him wielding a gun. It wasn't long before he caught up to Shawn, being in much better shape than the psychic who, for the most part, had been confined to a cage for X-amount of months.

'_This is it,_' Shawn had thought as the man gained on him. '_This is how it's going to end._'

A shot rang out and Shawn felt something hit him in the shoulder. It stung before it went numb, and his pace slowed as the numbness spread, but it wasn't a bullet that hit him. It was a small tranquilizer dart. A second shot rang out; this time the dart hit him in the lower back.

Shawn fell to the ground in a heap, and could only lay there and listen to the man walk up to him; his heart was about ready to burst with fear. He expected to be beat, to be yelled at for running away, but instead the man knelt down next to him, plucked out the darts, and called him a stupid mutt for running in a straight line. "Makes it too easy," the man had said, "Like shooting fish in a barrel."

Re-attaching the leash, the man lead a stumbling, dumbfounded Shawn back to the cabin. About a week later, he let Shawn out again, told him to get running, and took off after the psychic soon after. This happened again and again and each time, Shawn got a little bit better at evading capture, but he was never good enough to completely escape.

'_He's hunting me_,' Shawn thought on more than one occasion. '_Am I just some glorified game to him?_'

It didn't make sense to him then, and it didn't make sense to him now. The weeks passed on as they usually did, with Shawn either stuck in the cage or being walked around outside on the lease. He was always tense when he was brought outside on the leash, because he never knew when he was actually being brought out for a hunt. Three more times of being hunted passed, and during the last hunt, he seriously almost thought for a moment that he might actually get away. He had been running and dodging for well over an hour when the darts hit him, three this time. It seemed that his captor was getting tired of their current hunt and added in the third dart for extra insurance. The man even seemed out of breath when he caught up to Shawn and plopped down on the ground next to the psychic. Petting Shawn on the head, the man laughed happily and praised the psychic.

"Good dog, you're such a good dog."

What Shawn hated most was that a small part of him actually enjoyed the praise, and that as much as he reminded himself over and over again that he wasn't a dog, that small childish, or perhaps brainless, part of him would say, '_Good dog. Good dog. I'm a good dog._'

And as if this wasn't frightening enough, the man said, "You're ready."

Ready for what though?

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_End of chapter one. I had to cut it off here and split chapter one into two separate chapters because I was already at 7000 words and it wasn't even done yet (plus, I have animation HW that I really need to get started on and I wanted to post something for this before I did). If you think this was messed up, believe me guys, it gets weirder. Hopefully some of you out there like weird._

_Review please and tell me what you think!_


	2. Chapter 2

_*face-palms at last episode's flashback of Henry teaching young!Shawn how to escape a pursuer* Obviously this story is AU and can be considered stand-alone from the current season. Good episode though (even though I had some trouble suspending my disbelief about certain things and if you've seen the episode, you probably know what I'm talking about). Anyway..._

_Thank you everyone for all of your wonderful reviews! I'm glad you're liking it so far, and I hope I don't lose any readers with this chapter (please be sure to read the author's note at the end of the chapter so that I may further explain myself.) Enjoy!_

Disclaimer: I don't own Psych, don't sue me.

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**Chapter Two**

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_BANG!_

_BANG!_

_BANG! _

Shawn's eyes snapped open and he sucked in a startled breath. All around him, he could hear the sounds of the forest; the wind, the rustle of leaves, the nearby wildlife. Cool soil sifted through his fingers as his hand curled into a fist. Gazing at the tree branches stretched out above him, he quickly deduced that he was outside, lying on the forest floor, and it was around dusk; the last few rays of sunlight shining through the trees as the sun set.

'_What? How?_'

He couldn't understand what was going on. Why was he outside? _How_ had he gotten outside? He reached up with one hand and grasped at the collar still around his neck, fumbling with it for a moment to try and see if it was attached to a chain of some sort. Maybe he was being left outside again for being a bad d-

'_No. Not a dog._'

There was no chain though, no leash, no restraint of any sort and he didn't feel the familiar numbing pinch from a tranquilizer dart. Still laying on the ground, he looked around himself to see that there was no cabin nearby either. Listening for several minutes, he found that there was also no angry voice calling him a bad dog faintly in the distance and there were no pounding footsteps coming his way. There was nothing. Just him and the forest.

'_What happened?_'

He couldn't remember and a large part of him didn't want to remember even though a small something inside of him was telling him that he _needed_ to remember, that it was important that he did. He knew that he should be closing his eyes, concentrating, and trying to think back and figure out what was going on. He had this feeling that something big had happened and that it was important that he remember what it was. Something needed to be done about... _something_, but what? He didn't know and he didn't _want_ to know because he was tired, tired of training and running in fear and wondering what was going to happen to him. He just wanted to go home.

_Snap!_

Shawn bolted upright, scrambling backwards, away from the source of the snapping twig, and only stopped when his back hit the trunk of a tree. Despite the fact that whatever had stepped on the twig was too light to be human, he had been expecting his captor. For all Shawn knew, the man could be light on his feet if he wanted to and could easily sneak up on the psychic. However, even if it wasn't human, the last thing Shawn expected to see standing across from him was a dog; a black lab from the looks of it, with white splotches decorating his muzzle and chest. He had to hold back a hysterical laugh, because out of all the things in the forest that it could have been, a dog was the thing that found him. A dog, all the way out here in the middle of nowhere, a dog, just like him, _a dog._

The dog backed up, apparently just as startled by Shawn's sudden movement as Shawn was by the dog itself. It growled at him warily before turning and bolting off into the underbrush, disappearing from view. Its collar jingled briefly before that too faded as the dog got further away.

Not moving from his spot against the tree, Shawn wondered if there were people nearby. The dog had a collar, so it must have owners. He couldn't help but wonder if they were good people or bad people though. Maybe there _were_ no people, maybe the dog was just as lost as he was.

Using the tree for support, Shawn pulled himself to his feet. He couldn't just sit there all night, he had to go. He had to... had to do _something._

'_Have to go back to the cabin,_' he thought. Pushing away from the tree, he took a few steps before he froze. '_Wait. What?_'

Go back to the cabin? Why in the world would he do that? He was finally out of his cage, without any leashes or chains, and his captor was nowhere in sight. He should be escaping! With his captor not knowing where he was (at least as far as Shawn knew), he finally had a good chance of getting away. Maybe, just maybe, this was enough of a head start for him to reach freedom in time.

As he began traveling in a random direction, hoping that it was the right direction, his mind whined at him, '_Bad dog, running away. Don't want to be a bad dog._'

'_I'm not a dog!_' he nearly screamed it out loud, but thankfully restrained himself. Who knew if his captor was nearby or not?

Stubbornly forcing himself forward, Shawn bolted off into the underbrush. He was so tired of running, but he knew if he had any hope of getting away and finding help, he'd need to put all of his effort into this last run.

'_No, no,_' that small part of him continued to whine as he ran. '_Can't leave. Don't wanna be a bad dog._'

Gritting his teeth, Shawn held back a frustrated growl (_but he doesn't-_), and thought to himself over and over again that he wasn't a dog and that his mind needed to stop _freaking out on him_ because he needed all one-hundred percent of it on his side so that he could concentrate on escaping. As if needing to further prove his point, he was so wrapped up in his internal crisis that he completely missed the tree root sticking out of the ground in front of him and went tripping over it and tumbling down a steep hill.

He landed with a thud at the bottom, startling yet another dog, a husky this time, that had been standing nearby. The husky growled at him, backing away, and Shawn actually found himself growling back. What surprised him even more than that was that he felt fully ready and willing to fight this dog if he needed to. He supposed that after everything he'd had to deal with for the past several months, he wasn't about to let this dog push him around.

A branch snapping in the distance tore both he and the dog out of their stand-off, the step that had caused it sounding much heavier than before, heavy enough to be human. Another heavy step soon followed the first. The husky turned tail and went racing off into the forest, disappearing into some bushes. Deciding that the dog had the right idea, Shawn got to his feet and took off running in the opposite direction of the footsteps. Whoever the footsteps belonged to quickly took chase, pounding after him through the forest.

"_Bad dog!_" the malicious voice of his captor shouted after him and Shawn's heart nearly melted in despair, for although his captor was a fair distance away, the other man was still too close for Shawn to have any hope of actually getting away. "_Bad dog!_"

He wasn't a dog. He wasn't. Dogs had paws and a tail and large furry ears that flopped about in the wind. Dogs also had sharp teeth they could use to defend themselves with, and dogs could run much faster than any human if they wanted to. Shawn wished for a moment that he was a dog because then he could outrun this man and escape him, and if the man somehow caught up with him, he could attack him with his sharp teeth. Being a dog would be so much better in this situation. Being a dog would mean survival.

"_Bad dog!_"

'_Not a dog. Not a dog. Not a dog..._'

But... if he wasn't a dog, then how come he had paws? He just said before that dogs had paws and clearly he had paws. How else would he be running on all fours; the wind blowing through his fur, his large, pointed ears determining where the pursuing footsteps were coming from and assuring him that he was leaving the man far behind. Only a dog could run this fast, weaving through the trees and the underbrush like the wind.

'_...Not a _bad_ dog._'

After much running that, had he been human, would have tired him out long before, Shawn finally burst free from the forest and discovered a paved road. A road meant more people, people who might be nicer than his captor and would be nicer than him. He padded out onto the road and looked both ways, but could not see a car in sight. He couldn't wait for people to come, he'd have to go find them, and he knew that if he followed the road, eventually he would find them.

His tail swishing behind him (_dogs have tails, so he was a dog_), Shawn trotted down the road in search of civilization. He traveled down the road for a long while, hoping to see the light of houses or streetlamps in the night, when suddenly headlights were bearing down on him. His ears flattened against his head and he crouched down fearfully as the car's brakes screeched. Thankfully, the metal menace swerved around him before coming to a complete stop. Although he was no longer in danger of being hit, Shawn still stayed crouched down on the ground. There were good people and there were bad people and he didn't know what sort of people these were, and until he was sure, he was going to stay on the defensive.

A man was the first to step out of the car, and Shawn pressed himself even closer to the ground as he was reminded of the man that had kept him locked up. As the man stepped out of the car though, Shawn could hear a woman shout, "Be careful, Jerry! It could be rabid!"

Shawn's ears perked up, because even though the woman was yelling and accused him of being rabid (_which he was most certainly not, but for them to even make that accusation meant that he must be a dog_), there was concern and kindness in her tone.

"I'm just going to make sure he's not hurt," Jerry said before turning away from the woman in the car and slowly approaching Shawn. He held his hands out in front of him and crouched low to the ground as he approached so that he wasn't towering over Shawn. In a voice that was just as kind as the woman's, he said, "Hey buddy. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to make sure you're okay."

Shawn's tail wagged nervously as he crept over to the man, Jerry, who seemed just as cautious as he was. Jerry held one hand out to Shawn, who looked at the hand curiously before looking up at Jerry's face, as if to ask, '_What do you want me to do with that?_'

'_Dogs sniff a person's hand to gain their scent, to see if they're trustworthy,_' Shawn reminded himself. That was stupid though, a fact about dogs people probably made up. After all, what does trust smell like? Shawn was sure that he couldn't tell what type of person his captor was through smell alone. Instead, Shawn bumped his head against the man's hand because good dogs get pet and he was a good dog.

"Oh," Jerry said, sounding startled as he pulled his hand away briefly before reaching back down and petting Shawn on the head. "You're really cold. How long have you been out here?" While he pet Shawn with one hand, he reached down with the other and fiddled with the leather collar around Shawn's neck. "Hmm, no tags. Maybe your owners have you micro-chipped. Still, I'm worried about how cold you are."

Standing up, Jerry lightly tugged on Shawn's collar, being much more gentle than Shawn's captor had ever been, and asked in that same kind tone, "You want to go for a ride, buddy? It's nice and warm in the car."

Shawn followed Jerry a few steps to the car before hesitating. He looked back down the road where he knew the cabin lay somewhere deep in the forest. For so long, he had been wanting to get away, not because he was a bad dog, but because his captor was a bad owner, a bad person who was cruel to him. Shawn knew he deserved better treatment than that, any dog did. Yet, with freedom and a better life finally within his grasp, Shawn couldn't help but pause. His missing memories lay back there with that cabin, memories of something important that needed to be remembered, and as he thought about this, that feeling from before that called for him to do _something_ returned.

Another light tug broke Shawn out of his thoughts and he followed Jerry the rest of the way to the car. Opening the back door, Jerry helped Shawn climb his way into the backseat of the car. The car itself didn't feel any warmer, but then again, Shawn didn't feel cold either, so he'd have to take the man's word for it.

"Is he hurt?" the woman in the passenger's seat asked.

"He wasn't limping or whining or anything," Jerry said, climbing into the drivers seat. "But he was really cold. I'm worried that he's hypothermic. I'd like to get him checked out. Plus, he has a collar, so his owners are out there somewhere."

As the two talked about bringing him to the emergency animal hospital in Santa Barbara which was apparently the closest town to them, Shawn laid his head down on the seat. They were taking him to Santa Barbara, a place where his father and his friends lived. They would keep him safe, and maybe they'd be able to help him figure out this feeling he had deep inside that made him want to return to the cabin while at the same time run away from it.

Shawn fell asleep to the soft tunes playing on the car radio.

.

* * *

.

The first thing Shawn noticed when he next woke up was that the car had stopped moving. Light from nearby street lamps shone in through the windows and from his position in the back seat, he could see the faces of nearby buildings. He didn't quite recognize the area that they had stopped in, but he figured that they were back in Santa Barbara since that was where the couple had talked about taking him before he fell asleep.

Sitting up in the back seat, Shawn realized that the man, Jerry, was missing from the driver's seat, but the engine hood was up and judging from the way the woman was leaning out the open window on the passenger's side, Jerry was trying to fix something wrong with the car and the woman, who Shawn was beginning to suspect was his wife, was giving her expert opinion on the matter.

"I don't understand why it stopped," Jerry was saying. "I can't see anything wrong."

"There are no caps missing?" the woman asked. "No wires or belts loose?"

The street lamps around them began flickering erratically and Jerry heaved a frustrated sigh.

"No," Jerry said, "and those flickering street lamps sure aren't helping the situation."

"I'll go grab a flashlight before they go out," the woman said, hopping out of the car and closing the door behind her. "Maybe there was some sort of power surge and it effected our car."

"Is that even possible?" Jerry asked, peaking around the hood of the car to give the woman a skeptical look.

"I don't know," the woman said, opening up the trunk to fish through it for a flashlight. "It's my best guess."

More and more lights on the street, not just the street lamps, began flickering. As the woman moved to the front of the car to assist in finding out what was wrong with the engine, Shawn stood up in the back seat and nervously paced from window to window, trying to take in as much of his surroundings at once. The flickering lights were unusual and he just had this bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that made his hackles stand on end.

There. Far behind them on a street corner stood the shadowy silhouette of a man. Dangling from his hand was what looked like a rope of some sort or, Shawn whined low in his throat, a leash. The man began moving toward them taking slow steps, quickly getting closer and closer to the car then seemed physically possible for each step he took. Shawn couldn't make out what he looked like, the light cast from the flickering street lamps didn't seem bright enough to reveal any distinguishing features, yet somehow Shawn knew that the man was after him. Whether he be working for Shawn's captor or be Shawn's captor himself, the psychic knew that this shadowy figure had come to take him back to the cabin, or maybe even some place worse than the cabin.

'_No, no, no,_' he thought with a whine, his ears flattening against his head.

He couldn't go back. He had just barely gotten away, he hadn't even had enough time to see anybody that he actually knew in Santa Barbara. He wasn't about to let himself be dragged back to that horrific cabin before he could even do that. He needed to get away, quickly, before the man reached the car. He would fight for his freedom if need be, but he knew that the leash would win out in the end, and he wanted to avoid a confrontation with it for as long as possible.

'_Run! I need to run!_' he thought frantically before jumping over into the passengers seat and leaping out the open window.

His paws barely hit the pavement before he took off running down the street, leaving the two people and their car far behind before they could even protest. An enraged, inhumane shriek echoed in the street behind him, the wind howling along with it, before it all faded away as Shawn ran. He felt that he ran faster in that moment than he had ever run before, encouraged by the fact that he was in familiar territory rather than that maze of a forest.

Bounding down the street, being sure to twist and turn down many alleys and streets so that he couldn't be followed, Shawn traveled past different storefronts and eventually reached neighborhoods, neighborhoods that he recognized. Deciding to go to the closest person he knew in this area, Shawn turned down another street and eventually ended up in front of a small, but decent sized house on a hill. A couple of old newspapers packaged in orange plastic lay piled up on the steps leading up to the front door and Shawn was sure to grab one in his mouth to bring up because that's what good dogs do, they bring people their newspapers.

Sitting down on the welcome mat, something that a part of him still found amusing considering whose house he was at, Shawn whined past the newspaper in his mouth and scratched at the front door. He paused and waited, occasionally casting a nervous glance over his shoulder to make sure that there was nobody sneaking up on him, before he scratched at the door again with a louder whine. He didn't have to wait long this time before lights turned on in the house and he heard the click of the bolt lock turning before the door opened.

Standing in the doorway dressed in plaid PJs was a rumpled looking Detective Carlton Lassiter. When his eyes fell on Shawn, the man frowned with a pained, exhausted look on his face.

"Spencer," he said quietly, lacking the usual bite in his tone that he reserved for the psychic.

Dropping the newspaper at Lassiter's feet, Shawn's ears perked up happily at the use of his name, his _real_ name. His tail wagging behind him, Shawn tilted his head to the side and prodded cautiously, testing the detectives mood, "I'm a good dog?"

Letting out a long-suffering sigh, Lassiter knelt down in front of Shawn so that they were eye-to-eye. The detective's frown deepened before he raised a hand and, hesitating only for a moment, pat Shawn on the head, ruffling his large furry ears. Lassiter's hand fell to his side and he stared at Shawn for a few minutes, completely silent, before he picked up the newspaper and said just as quietly as before, "Yeah, you're... you're good." Rising to his feet, Lassiter held the door open and muttered, "Come on in."

Shawn quickly scurried inside and threw one last nervous look out into the darkness of the night before Lassiter closed the front door. Not really sure what he should do with himself now that he was safely indoors, Shawn stuck to Lassiter's side and followed the detective into the kitchen. Aside from another exhausted sigh, the man stayed silent as he mixed together coffee and alcohol. Lassiter frowned and got a far-away look in his eyes as he sipped his drink.

Shawn whined as he stared up at the detective, partly because he remembered how his captor acted when he drank, but mostly because of how strange Lassiter was acting. Shawn felt like he was missing something, but he didn't know what.

"You okay, Lassi?" he finally asked.

The detective's grip on his coffee mug tightened until his knuckles turned white, and Shawn took a cautious step back.

"Yeah, I'm okay," the detective said after a moment of silence. He stared down at Shawn, a strange look in his eyes, before he moved out of the kitchen with his drink still in hand.

Shawn followed him into the living room, being sure to keep a couple feet of distance between them. It wasn't because he was afraid of the detective, it was because Lassiter was acting oddly and Shawn didn't think he'd be able to predict the man's next move, so he wanted to be cautious around him. By-passing the couch, Lassiter came to stand before a wall on the far side of the room.

With his tail wagging sedately behind him, Shawn curiously tilted his head and stared up at the wall that the detective had become so absorbed in. There were newspaper clippings, maps with X's and circles drawn on it, timelines, and all sorts of other pages of information. Sticky notes were scattered all across the wall, short sentences scribbled out on each. Padding closer to the wall so that he was standing by Lassiter's side, Shawn examined the contents of the wall more curiously. Titles and statements typed in bold lettering stood out to him most, things like '**SBPD's Top Psychic Detective Missing**,' '**Still Missing**,' '**No Ransom**,' '**No Leads**.'

Then Shawn saw a photograph in one of the newspaper clippings, a smiling photograph of him, and yet it couldn't be... because he was a dog, not a person. No, that wasn't him. That was just a random photo of some man, possibly having to do with the case. As for all of the papers on the wall about the case itself, those _were_ about him. He had been taken what felt like so long ago, and it was nice to know that Lassiter and the rest of the station had put so much effort into trying to find him.

"I'm not missing," Shawn said happily, feeling the need to point that fact out to the detective who still seemed to be torn up about the case. "I'm back. I'm right here."

Lassiter didn't react positively to the news though. In fact, he didn't seem to give any sort of reaction at all. He merely gulped down his caffeine/liquor mix before moving back into the kitchen for more. Not bothering to follow the detective this time, Shawn watched from his spot next to the wall as Lassiter poured himself another drink, foregoing the coffee this time.

"Lassi..." Shawn trailed off, not knowing what to say. He was back, wasn't he? He was standing in the detective's home, he was in Santa Barbara, so of course he was back. Why was Lassiter acting like this though? Acting as if... as if...

"What's wrong?" Shawn asked, confused. "Lassi, what's-"

"God, Spencer, what do you want from me?" Lassiter suddenly snapped, slamming his drink down on the kitchen table. "I'm trying, okay? I can only do so much!"

Shawn's ears flattened against his head and he shrunk up against the wall.

"I'm... I'm a good dog?" he questioned, not understanding the man's outburst.

The question extinguished Lassiter's anger and the man seemed to deflate. Running a frustrated hand through his hair, Lassiter said, "No, you're- I mean, yes, but..." He sighed. "It's fine, Spencer."

Leaving his drink in the kitchen, the detective moved into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. Shawn watched the back of the couch for a few minutes, waiting to see if Lassiter would do or say something else, before turning his attention back to the wall that held clues to his... his dog-napping (_because he was a dog_). Maybe the wall could shine some light on the situation and explain to him something about his abduction that he was clearly missing.

The wall revealed nothing though, and as he continued to stare at it, that feeling from before returned; the feeling that there was something important that he needed to remember, and that he needed to do something about it. He couldn't just stay hiding in Lassiter's house forever. As much as he didn't want to, he needed to go back. He needed to do something.

"Lassi," he called, pulling himself away from the wall and trotting around the couch so that he was facing the detective. "I need to go back. I... I don't want to, but I need to."

Lassiter stiffened on the couch and threw Shawn another pained look. "It's alright, Spencer," he eventually said, his words sounding hollow. "You're..." he trailed off.

"No, no," Shawn said, resting his muzzle on the couch cushion nearest to where Lassiter sat. "There's something back there. I need to remember , but I can't. So... so I need to go back." Shawn whined, his ears quivering. "I don't want to, but I have to."

Lassiter rested a comforting hand on Shawn's head, a gesture that was lost on the psychic when the lights began flickering. Shawn pulled away from the detective, remembering what happened the last time the lights began flickering.

"No, no, no," Shawn said quietly, his ears flattening against his head. "How'd he find me?"

The man with the leash was back. He had somehow found Shawn and was coming to take him away. It was true that Shawn had wanted to go back to the cabin to try and figure out what he was forgetting, but he didn't want to be dragged back, not by his captor or anyone working for his captor. If anything, he wanted Lassiter to come back with him because although they had their skirmishes in the past, Shawn knew that the detective would defend him, would keep him safe.

"Don't want to go back like this," Shawn muttered more to himself than anything. His eyes darting over to Lassiter, he said, "Lassi! Lassi, we need to go. He's coming."

But the detective didn't move from his spot on the couch, and the lights continued to flicker. Shuffling from paw to paw, Shawn's eyes darted all around the room, trying to figure out how the man would get in. Would he enter through the front door, or would he come in through the windows? He was close, Shawn knew, but how close?

Turning his gaze back to the detective, not understanding why he wasn't doing anything, Shawn said, "Lassi, _please_."

Shawn had always been able to handle whatever cases had come his way in the past. That's not to say that he took care of every case all on his own, he had had help with each one in some way, shape or form, but he had never felt as helpless as he did now with his own abduction.

"I... I need help. I can't do this alone," Shawn said.

Lassiter didn't move though, he just held Shawn's gaze and said with a sad look in his eyes, "I'm sorry, Shawn."

In that instant, the man with the leash seemed to melt out of the shadows in a corner of the living room. Even in the room's flickering lights, Shawn couldn't see the man's face through the shadows that seemed to cling to his flesh. The man's form flickered, like a TV picture with bad reception. Shawn didnt have enough time to think of how odd that was, he barely even had enough time to yelp before the man was upon him and wrapping boney fingers around his collar, pulling him back... back... back...

.

* * *

_._

_BANG!_

_BANG!_

_BANG!_

Shawn's eyes snapped open and he sucked in a startled breath. All around him, he could hear the sounds of the forest; the wind, the rustle of leaves, the nearby wildlife. Cool soil sifted through his fingers as his hand curled into a fist. Gazing at the tree branches stretched out above him, he quickly deduced that he was outside, lying on the forest floor, and it was around dusk; the last few rays of sunlight shining through the trees as the sun set.

'_What? How?_'

He couldn't understand what was going on. Why was he outside? _How_ had he gotten outside? One hand reached up and wrapped around his collar. There was no chain, no leash, no restraint of any sort, not even the familiar numbness of a tranquilizer dart... What had happened? He couldn't remember...

.

* * *

_That's it for this chapter. Poor Shawn is stuck on a repeating loop. Also, if anyone's confused about this: Yes, Shawn did actually become a dog in this chapter (*purposely vague* in a way...), it wasn't all just in his head, and he can talk to people if he so chooses (and that's all I'll say about that particular subject). _

_Okay, so here's the deal guys: When I originally came up with this idea (the whole 'guy treats Shawn as a dog' thing), I had planned on it simply being the back-story to a short supernatural Psych fic (Supernatural the TV show is the crossover, btw. Whether or not Sam and Dean make an appearance is still up for debate)._

_However, as I let the first chapter sit on the interwebs for a while, I began thinking of all the other things I could do with this story (lots of hurt/comfort, messed up psychological stuff. The type of stuff that I'm sure most of you out there would much rather be reading). So, after much thought, I decided: why not have my cake and eat it too?_

_I feel it would be a personal injustice to myself not to have the story at least a little bit like how I originally wanted it, so yes, there will be some supernatural stuff in the beginning of this fic, but there will **also** lots of non-supernatural, hurt/comfort, messed-up psychological stuff, especially further into the fic, and the story itself will be much longer than I originally intended. So I hope you guys will stick with me through the rest of this fic and enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it, even if the beginning part isn't exactly your cup of tea._

_Review please and tell me what you think. It'd be nice to know if anyone's still interested in reading this. *crosses fingers and posts chapter*  
_


	3. Chapter 3

_Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay. Midterms were an evil beast. Thank you everyone for all of your wonderful reviews! I'm glad you're all still interested in the story even though it's taken a supernatural turn. Hopefully I'll be able to clear up some confusion in this chapter._

Disclaimer: I don't own Psych or certain details I'm using from Supernatural, don't sue me.

* * *

**Chapter Three**

**.  
**

The last time Carlton saw Shawn Spencer had been a little over eight months ago, sometime during the beginning of April. The fake psychic had stopped by the station, apparently following a lead (if you could call it that) on a cold case file he had gotten earlier. The case involved a person who had gone missing around eight years ago and because the case, for once, was not actually one Carlton had worked on, he hadn't cared at the time that Spencer was pursuing it.

Carlton remembered his last encounter with the fake psychic quite clearly, as he would soon find himself replaying the moment over and over again in his head in the near future, trying to pick out any clues that might be useful. Spencer had come into the station and was being his usual annoying self, clearly having no idea just what sort of danger he was putting himself in by investigating the cold case (there was no doubt in Carlton's mind that the two disappearances were connected. That would just be too much of a coincidence, and Carlton didn't believe in those sort of coincidences).

"_Oh, Great,_" Carlton had snapped at the sight of the younger man, "_Can't I go a week without seeing your face in here?_"

He had still been feeling angry over Spencer's April Fools joke which involved super-gluing everything on his desk _to_ it, including a pair of his handcuffs.

"_Nice to see you too, Lassi,_" Spencer had said with his usual laid-back attitude and shit-eating grin.

"_What do you want, Spencer?_" he had asked, not in the mood to deal with the fake psychic, not that he was _ever_ in the mood to deal with the younger man's antics.

"_Don't get your panties in a bunch, Lassi, I'm not here to see you,_" the fake psychic had said before raising his fingers to his head in his usual 'vision pose.' "_I'm sensing something off about this missing person's case. The spirits are questioning a noise complaint that Mr. Thomas, the missing person, had previously filed. Can you tell me where Officer Nelson is?_"

Relieved to be able to direct Spencer's attention elsewhere, even if it was at the expense of an Officer, Carlton had pointed the younger man in the right direction and sent him on his way. In the middle of doing paperwork for a case himself, Carlton only vaguely remembered Spencer leaving the station not too long afterwards. It was the last time he ever saw the younger man.

Whenever Carlton looked back on that day, he refused to feel guilty for his attitude toward the fake psychic; he refused to feel guilty for how happy he had been to be able to push Spencer off onto Officer Nelson like he was a bad case of the flu. Spencer was a nuisance _on purpose_. He liked to push Carlton's buttons and see what sort of reaction he would get. One might say that it was 'their thing'. Spencer would come in to the station or butt in on Carlton's cases and play the part of the annoying fake psychic who could, admittedly, get results, and Carlton would growl and curse and fight the younger man the whole way. It would have just been plain strange if Carlton had been nice to Spencer that day, especially so soon after the April Fools joke.

Carlton also refused to feel guilty for how relaxed and happy he had been for the Spencer-free day afterwards because that too was just normal behavior for him. He _always_ feels relaxed and happy (as relaxed and happy as he can get) on the days Spencer chooses not to grace the station with his presence.

It was on the second day since Spencer was last seen at the station that everything came crashing down.

"_We think Shawn's missing,_" Guster had said when he and Henry Spencer had come into the station that day.

"_His bike's gone too_" Henry said. "_Normally I wouldn't think much of it, but then Gus told me about the case they were working on and, well, there are a lot of similarities._"

They all knew it was suspicious that Spencer had disappeared while investigating a missing persons case, and there _were_ a lot of similarities. Unfortunately, a lot of those similarities were what led to the missing Mr. Thomas' case going cold to begin with. Just like with Mr. Thomas' disappearance, there were no signs of forced entry at the Psych office or Spencer's apartment. There were no signs of a struggle, no sign of anything being amiss. With the younger man's Norton motorcycle gone as well, it looked as if Spencer simply hopped on his bike and left.

According to Henry and Guster, it was something that the younger Spencer was known for. Apparently, when Spencer got bored or when things got tough, he would hit the road and disappear for a while.

"_This doesn't mean that we're not going to try and find him,_" Chief Vick had said, "_but it's a fact we have to take into consideration._"

There were a few small clues that made this disappearance different from all of the other times that Spencer had run off. The fact that they couldn't get a signal from Spencer's cellphone to trace was a big one. Spencer's usual 'see-you-later' note to Guster was also strangely absent.

After putting out an APB on both Spencer and his bike, Carlton and O'Hara began following the fake-psychic's trail on the cold case file. They talked to everyone Spencer talked to, trying to figure out what the leads were that the younger man had been following before he disappeared.

Apparently the missing Mr. Frank Thomas had been seeing a therapist for depression and paranoia issues and was even taking medication for it. The family members they had talked to remarked that they weren't too surprised when Frank went missing, and they wouldn't put it past Frank to run off somewhere to go lock himself away in a hidden bunker for the rest of his days. It was even noted in the police reports that there was a possibility that Frank intentionally left or even killed himself, but without a body, it couldn't be said for sure.

"_Shawn thought there was something odd about the noise complaint Frank had filed before going missing,_" Guster had said during their official interview with him. "_Said something like, 'Why file a noise complaint to make your life more livable when you're just going to off yourself or run away anyway?' _"

"_Frank was a poker buddy of mine,_" Officer Nelson had explained when they went to him. "_Nice guy, but messed up in the head. The noise complaint was just a cover. I mean, Frank did have noise to complain about, some neighbor's yippy little dog, but he also talked to me about something bigger that was bothering him. He thought his therapist was doing 'evil and nefarious' things to him; his words, not mine. I told him not to worry about it. When he went missing, I made sure the therapist was investigated, but the man had an air-tight alibi. I told the psychic the same thing, and then he asked if any other patients of the therapist's went missing. I told him to check out the records room._"

"_Yeah, he came by,_" Dave Baker, the young man responsible for keeping track of all the files in the records room, had reported. "_I told him he couldn't get in without permission, so he left,_" he'd said with a shrug. "_That's it._"

Gus had previously explained that they never got around to talking to the therapist, but Carlton checked it out anyway. The man was apparently just getting back from a trip to Hawaii and had the used plane tickets, the credit card bills, and the vacation photos to prove it. Yet another air-tight alibi. In fact, it seemed that everyone they talked to had a good alibi. If someone had taken Spencer, it wasn't anyone they had talked to or investigated.

There was some factor to this case that Carlton wasn't thinking of, something he wasn't considering, but he just couldn't figure out what. For the days following Spencer's sudden disappearance, Carlton didn't sleep. He was too wrapped up in trying to find some miracle clue, something he was missing. Nothing revealed itself though, and as the days dragged on, Carlton knew their chances of finding Spencer were diminishing.

Days turned into weeks and before they knew it, a month had passed. Henry Spencer went from practically living at the station to stopping by every now and then or calling to see if there was any news. They were half way into the second month when they finally caught a bit of a break.

Spencer's bike had been found.

It had been a pure stroke of luck. Buzz McNab had been hauling some stuff he cleaned out of his garage down to the local junkyard when he saw it. The license plates were gone, but he thought it was worth a try to run the serial numbers and they came up as a match. Both the Norton and the owner of the junkyard were brought into the station, and Carlton had to hold back a wince at the sight of the bike. It was all smashed up, as if it had been through a horrific accident.

Passing by the bike that was being wheeled downstairs on a cart to be checked over for evidence, Carlton headed to the interrogation room where the junkyard owner was being held. He hadn't been too surprised to see Henry and Guster standing next to Chief Vick and O'Hara in the room next to the interrogation room, watching through the two-way mirror. As Carlton began questioning the junkyard owner, he found that this was where their luck had ended.

Apparently the bike had been dumped in the junkyard the previous month, meaning that for a whole month the missing motorcycle had been sitting out in the junkyard, any evidence that may have been on it getting washed away by the rain. It had arrived at the junkyard looking just as beat up then as it did now. As for the person who had dropped the bike off...

"_She was a pretty young thing,_" the junkyard owner had said. "_Long, red hair. Looked to be in her twenties. She said the bike was her brother's and after his latest accident on it, she was getting rid of it before he killed himself. I'm I remember correctly, she said her name was... um.. Barbara Gordon._"

Contrary to popular belief, Carlton had been a child at one point, and although he hadn't been an avid comic book fan, he knew many of the basic characters.

"_Really now? Red hair? Said she was Barbara Gordon?_" he had questioned condescendingly. "_So you're saying Batgirl brought in the bike? Should I get Batman on the phone to confirm?_"

Other workers at the junkyard were able to confirm that the red-haired woman existed; however, to save money on tapes, the junkyard recorded over unwanted week-old tapes, so any footage that might have had the woman on it was long gone. They had the junkyard owner sit down with a sketch artist to describe the woman, but other than that, there wasn't much that they could do.

They were once again left without any leads and two months turned into three, then turned into four. Other cases came up that required their attention and Carlton found himself spending more and more time after work on the 'missing Spencer case.' Before he knew it, the fake psychic had taken up an entire wall in his living room. Sometimes Carlton would find himself spending hours just staring at that wall, taking in every little bit of information and trying to come up with an answer. He had gradually been getting less and less sleep as the months went by, instead just staring at that wall...

He should have known his mind would eventually snap.

It had all started sometime during the middle of the seventh month. He had been avoiding sleep again in favor of looking over the little evidence they had on Spencer's case when he heard a scratching noise coming from his front door. Grabbing one of his guns, he had immediately gone on the defensive. You could never be too careful after all. The scratching continued, and as Carlton slowly approached the front door he heard the whine of an animal accompany it, a whine that sounded distinctly dog-like.

Frowning, he holstered his gun and stepped up to the door. A quick look through the peephole of his door told him that whatever it was, it was definitely low to the ground. After listening to the whining and scratching for another few seconds, Carlton reluctantly unlocked the door and opened it just enough so that he could see out with one eye.

Sitting on his front step staring back at him was a dog, he wasn't sure what kind of dog it was as there wasn't enough light escaping from his slightly open front door for him to see. Carlton could just barely make out the newspaper that he had forgotten to grab that morning in its mouth. The dog seemed to perk up when it saw that he had opened the door. Dropping the newspaper on his welcome mat, the dog wagged its long, furry tail, and if dogs could smile, Carlton was sure this dog would be smiling at him.

It was definitely up there on his list of weird things that happened to him. The dog had a collar, so it wasn't a stray, and clearly it was well trained or at least trained enough to know the newspaper trick, but why in the world would it be bringing a stranger their newspaper?

"_Shoo,_" he had hissed, not in the mood to be dealing with some confused animal at such a late hour. He was more of a horse person than a dog person anyway.

The dog seemed to wilt at the command; the tail-wagging stopping as it lowered its head. Then, it seemed, that a few screws came loose in Carlton's head because as the dog peered up at him, he cold have sworn that it opened its mouth and talked, and not only did this dog speak to him, which it seems wasn't crazy enough for his apparent mental break down, the dog spoke using _Spencer's_ voice of all things.

"_Not a good dog?_" the hallucination (because that's what it _had_ to be) asked in such a broken tone that didn't sound right with Spencer's voice.

He honestly wasn't surprised that this was happening, that he was having some sort of mental break down. With the way he had been going, not really taking good care of himself along with obsessing over Spencer's disappearance, he figured it was a long time coming. He was _not_, however, going to just accept this and take it lying down. No, he had work in the morning (he should have gone to be hours ago), and he wasn't going to let a little hallucination get in the way and stop him from functioning and doing his job. He was sure that everything would be fine once he got back on a regular sleep schedule and started eating healthier.

It seemed that this was the right mind-set because the dog on the front step flickered for a second, almost like bad TV reception.

'_See?_' he had thought to himself. '_It's already going away._'

With this new plan in mind to take better care of himself, Carlton had closed his front door on the dog. As he walked away from the door and headed to his bathroom to get ready for bed, he tried not to feel guilty for shutting his door on the dog, tried not to feel guilty for ignoring the calls that followed soon after.

"_Lassi!_" Spencer's voice had called through the front door, the scratching noise soon accompanying it. "_Open up! Please, please, open up! He's after me! He's going to get me and take me back! I don't want to go back, Lassi, please..._"

No, he couldn't feel guilty because feeling guilty would mean that he was falling for the hallucination, that a part of him actually believed that it was actually there. There were cases that needed to be solved (Spencer's kidnapping included), people that needed to be rescued or brought to justice. He couldn't afford to lose his mind now. Maybe later, when everything was all said and done, he could take some time off, a mental health vacation, but definitely not now.

He ignored the calls coming from the front door and pushed back guilt that he shouldn't be feeling, and the only reason he turned off the lights in his house was because he was going to bed. It wasn't at all because they were flickering ominously, adding to his hallucination. He ignored the frightened yelp that came from his front door, and as he lay down in bed, he pretended that the dead silence following that yelp didn't bother him so much.

When he had gotten up and gone to work the next morning, he acted as if everything was normal. The hallucination had stopped the night before and hadn't bothered him since then, so he shouldn't waste his time thinking about it.

Yet...

He hadn't been able to get the moment out of his head. He kept hearing Spencer's pleas in his head, asking him to open the front door, and he hadn't been able to stop thinking about how he just ignored it all and left him out there. No matter how many times he had told himself that it was just a hallucination, he couldn't stop the guilt. It slowly ate away at him, making him lose more sleep than he had been getting prior to his mental break down.

The second time the dog showed up, it hadn't even been a week later. It had happened during another sleepless night. Carlton heard that same scratching noise at his front door. A million thoughts had raced through his head about how he shouldn't even open the door, shouldn't even bother to acknowledge the hallucination, but at the same time how could he ignore a plea for help? Unable to ignore the whining any longer, he had come to a compromise and decided to open the front door. He would let the dog with Spencer's voice in, but he would keep in mind that the dog wasn't actually there.

He had opened the front door all the way that time, the light from inside casting down on his front step and letting him actually get a good look at the dog sitting before him. It didn't look like any particular breed, so Carlton figured it was a mutt. It was a large dog and its fur length reminded Carlton of a German Shepherd or a Husky and the fur color itself was, of course, brown. The dog also had some darker brown markings that didn't quite make sense to Carlton (not that any of this made sense, but according to the logic of crazy town, if this dog was supposed to be Spencer, then it's darker brown markings didn't make sense). The dog had dark brown splotches on its chest and back, a couple of smaller dark brown splotches on its muzzle, and an even darker brown splotch that smeared across the upper right hand side of the dog's head. The dog had pointed ears, its right ear sticking up while its left ear was bent in the middle and flopped over. It was exactly the kind of haphazard look Spencer would have if he was a dog (and if he was going pretend that this dog was Spencer, he might as well start calling it a 'he' instead of and 'it').

He had frowned at the dog, but didn't say anything to it this time, so after a moment of silence, it was Spencer who spoke first.

"_I'm a good dog?_" Spencer had asked cautiously, his tone that time had been almost as bad as the broken tone Carlton remembered from before. Since when did Spencer ever genuinely act cautious around him?

"_Umm,_" Carlton had stumbled over his words, not really knowing how to respond to that question. Why would his hallucination of Spencer take the form of a dog? For that matter, why would Spencer himself believe he was a dog?

Getting straight to the point and trying to appease what he guessed was his guilty conscience taking physical form, he had said, "_Listen Spencer,_" he ignored how happy Spencer looked at being acknowledged, "_I'm sorry for ignoring you earlier and leaving you out here for whoever 'he' is supposed to be._"

Carlton would have to say one of the strangest things that had happened that night was the fact that Spencer had no idea what he was talking about. After spending several minutes trying to further explain himself to the dog (which wasn't crazy at all...), Carlton realized that Spencer didn't remember anything about coming to his doorstep a few days back. Deciding to let that go for now (because apparently there is _no_ logic in crazy town), Carlton moved on to apologizing to Spencer for not finding him yet and assured the dog that they were all still looking and doing the best they could. He figured that if the dog represented his guilty conscience, and if he reminded said conscience that he was doing all he could to find the younger man, then maybe his mind would be appeased and the hallucinations would stop.

In response to his apology, however, Spencer had simply looked confused and explained to Carlton that he was right there. Why would Carlton need to find him if he was right in front of him?

Not knowing what else to do or say, Carlton had let the dog into his house and decided to just see how things played out. Spencer stuck to his side for the most part, to the point of almost being clingy. Usually something like that would be normal for Spencer, the younger man was always trying to annoy him, but this time it seemed like the dog was clinging to him more out of fear than anything else and that was what unnerved Carlton the most.

It wasn't long before Spencer had spotted his own personal wall in Carlton's living room, but instead of making some smart remark about it (_"Aw, Lassi, I knew you cared!"_), he simply stared at it like it was an intriguing piece of artwork. Then, when the dog had laid eyes on a photo in a newspaper article of himself, as a human, not a dog, he flickered for a moment, but unlike the time before when it was just his image flickering for a few seconds like bad reception, his form flickered from that of a dog to how he should look as a human, standing on two legs before the wall. It was so quick, Carlton almost missed it, but what he did catch a glimpse of in those few seconds made his heart drop into his stomach.

He saw a flash of blood on Spencer's skin and staining his clothes...

Carlton barely even had a chance to process all the red before Spencer was a dog again, a brown dog with even darker brown markings that Carlton was beginning to think would look red had Spencer still been human. Spencer had then turned away from the wall, wagging his tail, and again reminded Carlton that he wasn't lost anymore. It didn't seem like he noticed his few brief seconds as a human at all. Leaving Spencer by the wall, Carlton went to go get a drink. He never realized his subconscious was so morbid, and it wasn't something he wanted to deal with sober.

Later on in the night, not too long after Spencer had begun to ramble on about something he needed to remember and about how he needed to '_go back_,' the lights began flickering like before. At the time, Carlton hadn't known what it meant, but Spencer apparently did. The dog began pacing around the house, telling Carlton that they needed to leave, that '_he was coming._' Not too long after those warnings, a dark form had stepped out of the shadows. It looked like the silhouette of a man, but other than that, Carlton couldn't make out any distinguishing features.

Automatically, he had drawn his gun, but he never ending up firing at the man because this was all just in his head and there would be nothing he could say to explain why he fired his weapon in his house, nothing he could say that wouldn't make himself sound crazy. The shadowy form hadn't paid him any mind anyway, it had only been interested in Spencer. Flickering erratically the same way Spencer occasionally did, the man lunged at the dog and grabbed his collar. Before Carlton had even been able to get out a word of protest, Spencer and the man disappeared in another violent flicker.

All was quiet and nothing else out of the ordinary had happened that night. He really didn't know what to think about the whole thing and it wasn't like he could go talk to anyone about it. They'd think he was crazy and that he wasn't fit to do his job. Granted, he was clearly a little bit unhinged to even be having these twisted hallucinations, but he could still do his job just fine. No, he decided he would keep this to himself, and unless it was effecting his ability to live or function at work, he wouldn't tell anyone.

As much as he had hoped that that was the last time he'd see the dog that was Spencer, what happened that night happened all over again a few days later, and a few days after that, and a few days after that. Each time it happened, Spencer didn't seem to have any recollection of ever having been to Carlton's house in dog-form before. Carlton had tried being nice to Spencer, hoping that it would make the hallucinations stop, and when that didn't work, he tried being his usual mean and angry self, but all that did was scare Spencer and make the night harder than it needed to be (Seeing the usually happy, laid-back Spencer scared like that was not an image he wanted in his head). Carlton had even taken to leaving his newspapers piled up in the front yard for the dog after he noticed how much easier Spencer was to deal with once he did something he thought a 'good dog' would normally do.

There were some nights when Carlton was tempted to just come out and ask Spencer where it was he had been and who his kidnapper was, but he never did. That would be taking this delusion to a whole new insane level that he didn't want to risk going to. This whole hallucination was just his guilt and subconscious taking a physical form, it wouldn't know the answers to his questions. Even asking those questions would mean that he was beginning to believe that some of this was real when it _wasn't._

Eight months ago in April, Spencer had gone missing. Seven-and-a-half months ago, not too long after the beginning of November, a figment of Carlton's imagination representing Spencer had shown up on his doorstep, looking like a large brown dog with uneven, pointy ears. He lost count how many times that dog had come to his doorstep. Sometimes it was once every few days, sometimes it was multiple days in a row, and each time Spencer seemed to think it was the first time he had been there.

Just five minutes ago (it currently being the first week of December), three days after the last time Spencer showed up on his doorstep, Carlton saw the familiar brown dog standing across the street from the station. Carlton froze on the front steps of the station when he saw him. Never before had his hallucination of the dog strayed from its usual repetitive loop that had been happening for so many weeks, and Carlton had to wonder what happened to make it change now.

He expected Spencer to come racing across the street and follow him into the station. Carlton expected the dog, younger man (whatever), to bug him for the rest of the day and put him at risk of someone finding out about his current mental instability. It would almost be like how things had been before the fake psychic had gone missing.

Surprisingly, Spencer did none of those things, he didn't even call out to Carlton from across the street. He simply stood there, his ears pressed back against his head in some show of emotion (nervousness, uncertainty, annoyance, fear? Carlton didn't know), and watched Carlton stand on the station's front steps. After a moment of staring, Spencer turned away and went trotting down the street, eventually disappearing around a building.

Sighing at the strangeness of it all and shaking his head, Carlton turned and headed into the building. Whatever this change in his hallucination meant, he just hoped that it wasn't a sign that it was getting worse.

.

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_That's it for this chapter! Yes, I know, things are still confusing, but this is a mystery after all. Lassi may think that this is a hallucination, but you all know that that's really Shawn in there. As for putting this story over in the crossover section, I'm thinking I might wait until after it's all written since there most likely won't be any actual Supernatural characters making an appearance in this story (still haven't completely made up my mind about this).  
_

_Review please and tell me what you think!_


	4. Chapter 4

_Hey everyone! Thank you to everyone for reviewing! You keep a girl going! ^^ Here's the next chapter! Short mention to "Lassi Did a Bad Bad Thing."_

Disclaimer: I don't own Psych, nor do I own certain details belonging to Supernatural.

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**Chapter Four**

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"_Hey Dad. Don't worry, I'm still coming over for dinner tonight, but I might be running a little late. Just got a couple of things I want to straighten out on a case first; unless, of course, you_ want _to go over case files with me, cause I could come over right now if so... Hm? No? Didn't think so, but riddle me this: What 'evil and nefarious' things could a therapist possibly be doing and is a fluffy white cat and world domination plans involved? Heh, no, I'm just kidding. See you tonight!_"

"To replay this message, press one. To delete, press two. To return the message sender's call, press three. To save, press four."

_Beep._

"Message saved. You have no new saved messages. To return to the main menu, press-"

_Click._

Henry closed his cellphone and set it down on the coffee table with a sigh. He'd lost count as to how many times he had listened to that message over the past seven or so months. It was at least twice a week. At first, he had been listening for clues and even after the SBPD had investigated everything Shawn had talked about in the phone message, Henry still told himself that he was listening for clues, for a lead of any sort, but as the first few months passed by, he knew he was just listening to it for the sake of hearing his son's voice.

_'See you tonight!'_

He still cursed himself for not knowing that anything was wrong when Shawn failed to show up for dinner that night all those months ago. Logically, he knew that it was a classic 'boy who cried wolf' scenario. Shawn was always blowing off dinner plans or plans to help Henry with a choir of some sort, why should that night have been any different?

Fatherly instincts, however, refused to listen to logic. Henry still beat himself up over the fact that while Shawn was getting kidnapped, he had eaten his dinner and gone to bed early thinking his son had once again skipped out on him. He should have _known_ that something was wrong, he should have sensed something. Even the next day when Gus called him looking for Shawn, he hadn't suspected anything. When any call to Shawn's cellphone had gone straight to voicemail, still he hadn't suspected anything. Several hours after, when both he and Gus were still unable to get a hold of Shawn, Henry had thought for a fleeting moment that maybe Shawn had taken off again, but that was the only thing he had suspected at the time.

Then Gus told him just what sort of case they had been investigating, a missing person's case, and Henry began to feel a sliver of worry that maybe there was something more to Shawn's sudden disappearance. Looking back on that day, Henry remembered how, as he told Gus not to worry, that it still hadn't been twenty-four hours, he had been thinking about how similar the whole situation was to the Drimmer case. He had called Karen, told her to let him know if Shawn showed up at the station, and then joined Gus in a search of Shawn's favorite hangouts.

When the next day rolled around, and they still hadn't heard from Shawn, they went to the station to report their suspicions. The investigation picked up quickly, and Henry had followed the whole thing closely. The first few days had been a blur of activity, but pretty soon, they had run out of leads. Shawn's cellphone couldn't be tracked and the APB on his bike and on Shawn himself turned up nothing.

Throughout the hysteria of the first few weeks of the investigation, Henry found himself hoping that Shawn really did just run off because that would mean that he had left of his own free will(Henry wouldn't put it past his son to find a way to block his cellphone signal if he didn't want to be found). He ran his mind in circles thinking about it, sometimes working himself up into a rage that Shawn would run off like this again and make so many people worry (because it was so much easier to get angry over the thought of Shawn purposely running off than to be worried or scared that his son might have been kidnapped and is being held somewhere against his will).

He had been so wrapped up in the investigation that it took him two weeks to realize that he hadn't called Madeline with the news. Once he remembered that, it took him another full day get up the courage to actually call her. Part of it was because he really didn't want to be the one to call up his ex-wife, Shawn's mother (mama-bear), and explain to her that her son had been missing for two weeks and she was only just hearing about it now, but it had also been because a part of him had wanted to believe that that's where Shawn disappeared to, and he knew that the second he called Madeline, that hopeful theory would most likely be disproved.

"_Is Shawn with you?_" was the first thing he had asked once he had manned-up enough to make the call.

"_No,_" she'd said, sounding confused. "_No, I haven't seen him since the last time I was in Santa Barbara. Henry, what's going on?_"

She had taken the rest of the call surprisingly well, the information not yet fully sinking in the same way Henry himself hadn't quite believed it the first few days Shawn went missing.

"_Are you sure he didn't just take off again?_" she had asked more than once, concerned but hopeful that this whole thing was just Shawn being Shawn.

"_We can't completely rule that possibility out, but... I really don't think that's the case this time,_" he had said quietly.

She had wanted to fly straight out to Santa Barbara, but Henry had talked her out of it, telling her that she'd be more useful keeping an eye out on things at her end in case Shawn showed up there. The call had ended with him promising to keep her updated on anything new with the case.

There wasn't any news though, not until the middle of the second month when they found Shawn's bike at a junkyard. It was the discovery of that bike that killed any hope Henry had that his son had willingly left. Shawn loved that deathtrap and Henry knew he'd never just toss it aside that, and the condition the bike had been found in couldn't mean anything good. Either Shawn had been in a bad accident when he was taken, or someone had purposely smashed up the bike before bringing it to the junkyard, probably to make sure the bike would remain in the junkyard rather than being sold to another person who would have it out on the streets in plain sight. Although neither was an appealing theory, Henry sincerely hoped it was the latter.

The bike was the only lead they really had going for them, and even that was a dead end. Any evidence that may had been left on it had been destroyed due to the bike being left out in the rain, and nothing ever came up on the red-haired woman who had delivered the bike in the first place.

Henry knew after that first month that the odds of finding Shawn were not in their favor, but he held out hope. Even as the months continued to pass by with no real progress, and the cop in him listed off all the statistics of kidnapping cases and how it'd be more likely that they'd be finding a body if they found anything at all, Henry continued to hope, because although he hadn't sensed anything the night Shawn had been taken, he felt that he'd know if Shawn had been... if Shawn was...

He couldn't even think it. Thinking it put him in a dark place. It made it seem too real, too likely.

'_Which it's not,_' he thought, burying his face in his hands, exhausted. '_because I would know. I would feel it if it happened._'

Standing up from the couch with another sigh, he grabbed the keys to his truck. He couldn't bear to sit around in his empty house any longer, staring at the blank spaces on the walls where photos of Shawn once rested (taken down and packed away in a box around a month ago after a particularly nasty bought of drunken depression), thinking about how Thanksgiving was approaching and that even after seven long months, his son was _still_ missing.

He needed to go for a drive and clear his head, something that he found he had been doing frequently for a good couple of weeks now. He never really had a destination in mind when he went out for a drive like this, he just drove until he left Santa Barbara behind (too much in that town reminded him of his son), and then drove the roads surrounding it for awhile before returning home.

This time, like many other times, he traveled the roads running through the Los Padres National Forest.* He'd found in the past that the large forest was a good place to go driving in. Rather than think about Shawn and the case, he could concentrate on safely traveling the long winding roads weaving through the forest.

The sun had been setting just as he had left Santa Barbara, and when he next looked at the clock in his truck, he was surprised to see that it was nearing ten O'clock. He had been so wrapped up in driving, he hadn't realized how late it was getting. Slowing down and checking to make sure the road was clear, he pulled a U-turn, deciding it was time for him to be heading back.

He hadn't been driving for very long when it happened. An animal stepped out in front of his truck. It happened so suddenly, he couldn't even process whether it was a dog, a coyote, or a deer. He barely even had a second to realize that he wouldn't be able to stop in time before his truck was bearing down on the unlucky creature. He stepped on the brakes anyway, automatically shutting his eyes against what was sure to be a messy collision.

An icy cold sensation suddenly washed over him like a wave...

...but that was all that happened.

His eyes shot open as his truck screeched to a stop. There had been no thump, no jerk of his truck hitting something or running over it. There was nothing but a biting cold feeling that sent shivers down his spin and left him seeing his own breath despite the truck's heater running. The rush of cold dissipated just as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a lingering chill that gave him goosebumps. Wondering if he had imagined the whole thing, Henry twisted around in his seat and gazed at the road behind him.

Standing a short distance away from the back of his truck was the animal. It was cast in a red glow from his brake lights, looking perfectly alive and intact and most definitely canine in appearances. Squinting more closely at it, Henry could just barely make out a collar around its neck.

'_Not a coyote then,_' Henry mused. '_Must belong to some campers and gotten lost._'

Henry couldn't understand how he had missed it though. Not that he was complaining about the animal's fortunate stroke of luck, but he just couldn't understand how it had managed to dodge his truck when it was just seconds away from colliding with his bumper.

'_Maybe I clipped it,_' he thought as he unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the truck. He wouldn't feel right if he just drove off without at least checking to make sure the dog was okay.

Closing the truck door behind him, he raised his hands in a non-threatening manner and slowly approached the dog who appeared to be frozen in shock. As he neared the animal, the night air seemed to grow colder around him, adding to the chill from before. He stopped a few feet away from the dog (knowing that a frightened animal could easily become dangerous) and crouched down, patting his legs.

"C'mere, boy... or girl," he called, whistling. "You're okay."

The dog's ears, which had been lowered defensively before, perked up at Henry's calls; both pointed like a Husky's, but with one bent over in the middle in a crooked manner. Wagging its long, furry tail, the dog stepped one paw forward when suddenly it flickered like an unstable TV picture, and Henry questioned if there was even a dog there at all. It being a hallucination would certainly explain how he had missed hitting it.

"Great," he muttered as he straightened up. "This is the last thing I need right now."

He turned back to his truck, planning on hopping inside and driving the rest of the way back home where he would go to sleep and pretend none of this ever happened. What stopped him from carrying out this plan though was one word.

"Dad?"

Heart suddenly in his throat, Henry whipped around in place. His eyes darted all around him, searching through the darkness for the familiar form of his son. Seeing nothing there, his eyes were drawn back to the dog standing before him. The animal was watching him closely, its head tilted to the side questioningly as its tail wagged slowly behind it.

"Shawn?" the name escaped his mouth before he could stop it.

That acknowledgment alone seemed to be enough for the dog, as it was suddenly walking towards him, tail wagging a mile a minute, and it (a _dog_) was talking, but it was talking using Shawn's voice.

"Dad," it said, not only sounding relieved, but sounding exactly like how Shawn sounded from the voicemail Henry had been listening to over and over again. "I'm so glad you're here. I didn't know where I was and I was trying to find people, _good people_, but no cars were coming and... I'm just... I'm just so glad you're here."

'_No... no, this isn't happening,_' Henry frantically thought, his breath catching in his throat.

Henry backed away from the dog, but the animal simply followed after him, so caught up in its joy that it didn't seem to notice just how its presence was affecting him. He stopped when he was at the driver's side door of the truck, his eyes not leaving the dog as his hands fumbled with the door's handle. The door wouldn't open though, the damn thing must be jammed again (it was one of the reasons he'd been thinking about getting a new truck).

Burying his face in his hands, Henry sank to the ground because he just couldn't deal with something like this right now. It had been hard enough just seeing pictures of his son every time he went home for all those months and torturing himself with an old voicemail message, not knowing where Shawn was but knowing that he was in trouble and that there wasn't anything Henry could do about it. To have this hallucination added on top of it though? To be hearing Shawn's voice and having this dog act as if it _was_ Shawn, talking to Henry as if everything was all right, being just a single foot away as if it was all over and Henry would be able to take Shawn home when in truth Henry knew that Shawn was still missing and that he may never see his son again, may never know what happened to him...

No...

It was too much to take...

Henry felt the weight of a cold paw rest on his knee. He lowered his hands, just now realizing that the dog stopped talking. He couldn't see much, now sitting outside of the glow of the taillights, but he could see that the dog's ears were lowered, almost sadly. For a long moment, he just stared at the dog, finding it hard to ignore how very real the pressure from that paw felt on his knee. Raising one shaking hand, he hesitated for a moment before running his fingers through the thick fur of the dog's neck. It was cold to the touch, just like the paw, but it was also soft and felt very real. His fingers stopped at the collar, feeling the thick leather, before pulling his hand back and resting it on his knee, right on top of the large paw.

"Dad?" Shawn asked hesitantly. "You okay?"

"Why are you wearing a collar?" Henry found himself asking.

The drooped ears pulled back, almost giving him an affronted look.

"Because," Shawn said after a short pause, sounding confused. "I'm a dog. Dogs wear collars."

Henry blinked in surprise, not really knowing what to say to that announcement. Yes, clearly Shawn _looked_ like a dog, but he wasn't actually a dog.

Before Henry could really come up with a response to that, the furry ears lowered back to their 'sad' position and Shawn asked in a quiet, tired voice, "Can we go home?"

Hallucination or not, it was a request Henry couldn't ignore, not when it was said with that voice, not when it was said using that tone.

"Yeah, sure son," Henry said, sounding just as tired.

He got to his feet. After a few minutes of struggling with the stuck driver's side door, he managed to get it open. Shawn hopped in first and climbed over to the passenger's seat before Henry climbed in himself. In the light of the truck, Henry finally got a clear look at the dog (at Shawn). He took in the sight of the brown fur with the darker brown markings, but it was Shawn's eyes that really made him pause. Although the eyes were that of a dog's, their color was the same hazel color he knew to be his son's.

Henry swallowed thickly as he buckled himself back in and turned his gaze to the road. Shifting into 'Drive,' he started off down the road heading back to Santa Barbara. He really didn't know what to make of this whole situation. If this really was just a hallucination brought about by stress or who-knows-what, then why was it... well... like _this?_ If he was going to hallucinate that Shawn was there, why would he be seeing him as a dog rather than as Shawn himself? Why would Shawn believe he was a dog? While he was on the subject, could someone actually _feel_ a hallucination?

What did it mean then if there _was_ something real about what was going on, and which parts of it all was real? He could have sworn that he had hit Shawn with his truck, and yet he didn't, so did that not happen? He was hearing Shawn's voice, but seeing a dog; a dog whose fur felt real, who wore a real collar, yet flickered once like it wasn't there and felt far colder than seemed healthy or even possible.

'_Flickering, almost unstable,_' his mind told him as he watched Shawn out of the corner of his eye. '_Very cold, like a cold spot. Impossibly missing him with the truck..._'

'_Stop,_' he told himself, yet he still opened his mouth and asked, "Shawn, where... where were you before? ...What happened?"

What did it say for his mental state that he was even asking this question? Henry was sure that if Madeline was here, she'd have quite a bit to say on this matter.

Henry slowed the truck down and as he waited for an answer, a ridiculous yet fatherly part of him noted that Shawn should be wearing a seatbelt.

Shawn shrank down in his seat with a quiet whine that sounded far too dog-like for Henry's liking. With his ears pressed back against his head, he finally said, "I was in the woods. I know that something happened, but... I can't remember what."

Henry's hands tightened against the wheel as he recalled stories of people's loved ones needing their help moving onto... onto the afterlife... Stories of lost, restless spirits just drifting, not knowing... and continued drifting until someone helped them. Madeline loved those sort of stories, mostly due to the psychological aspect of such an event, and Henry was pretty sure she was the one who told him most of them.

Those stories were just a bunch of bull though, no matter how similar this situation seemed to it. Yes, it may explain the flickering and the cold sensation that still seemed to linger even now with the truck's heater running, but it didn't explain the dog thing and as Henry pointed out earlier, he would have known if Shawn had... if his son was...

'_But what if this is Shawn's way of telling you?_' his mind asked.

Henry shook his head and pushed the thought away. He didn't even want to think about it, didn't want to think about the possibility that he and the police department were already too late. He had to hold out hope, even against all of the odds, even against the proverbial neon sign sitting next to him in the passenger's seat, and if it wasn't really Shawn sitting in that seat, then Shawn was still out there, alive, and they were going to find him.

Henry was going to drive Shawn home anyway though, even if it was very likely that there wasn't anyone sitting in the passenger's seat.

"You're not a dog, Shawn. You know that, right?" Henry suddenly said, surprising even himself. The silent drive had been getting suffocating (it just wasn't normal for Shawn to be _that_ quiet for _that_ long), and when he had opened his mouth to say something, he hadn't been expecting to say that. It must have been bothering him more than he thought, the way Shawn had said before, with such conviction, that he was a dog.

Henry slowed the truck down again and glanced over at Shawn, about to further explain his random, unexpected statement when suddenly Shawn flickered again and sitting in the dog's place was his son, his very human son who had dark circles around his eyes, his pale lips twitching up into a strained smile, and the blood-

Henry stepped on the brakes, forcing himself to start breathing again after the truck screeched to a stop; there was once again a dog sitting in the passenger's seat. There was no ignoring what he saw though, the blood staining his son's clothes and painting the right side of his son's head, running down his face in streaks.

"Oh, god," Henry breathed, resting his forehead against the steering wheel. He felt sick thinking about all of that blood and what it could mean. A quiet whine drew his attention back to the passenger's seat. Shawn was crouched down against the seat, as if trying to hide.

"You okay?" Shawn asked fearfully.

"Yeah," Henry croaked after a few deep breaths. "Yeah, I'm okay."

After taking a moment to compose himself, Henry turned his eyes back to the road and continued driving. He kept his eyes forward as he drove them back to Santa Barbara, afraid of what he might see the next time he looked back over to the passenger's seat. When Shawn answered his previous question by stating that, yes, he was in fact a dog, Henry didn't look over, and when Shawn curled up next to him, pressing a cold but furry canine head against his side, Henry wrapped a protective arm around the dog, but continued to keep his eyes on the road.

They were just barely re-entering Santa Barbara when the truck's engine suddenly shut off. Running only on momentum, Henry pulled the vehicle off to the side of the road and pulled it into park. He turned the key in the ignition a few times, trying to see if he could restart the engine, but he didn't even get a sputtering sound in response.

"Dammit," he swore, slamming a fist against the dashboard. He could feel Shawn shrink away from him when he did. Finally looking down at his son, he said with a sigh, "Sorry."

His truck breaking down was one of the last things he needed at this moment in time. He didn't really want to have to explain a dog who may or may not be there to a tow-truck driver or anyone else he could call to come get him. He tried the ignition a few more times, wondering what could have happened to completely kill his engine. Getting no response, Henry grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment (as the only streetlight on the stretch of road they were on was flickering erratically), and reached for the door handle, planning on getting out to see if he could spot what was wrong.

He froze with his hand on the handle when he heard Shawn whimper from beside him. Frowning, Henry looked back over at his son and said, "I'm just going to check and see what's wrong. It's alright, Ill be right back."

Shawn didn't appear to have heard him and, peering through the front windshield, he fearfully said, "That man..."

Following his son's line of sight, Henry was surprised to see the silhouette of a man far in the distance who, as far as he could tell, hadn't been there a moment before. Still, they were back in Santa Barbara and even though they were still on the outskirts of town, it wasn't too unusual for someone to be walking around.

"What about him?" Henry asked.

Ducking down in the seat so that he couldn't be seen through the windshield, Shawn fidgeted in place and said quietly but quickly, "We need to go. I think he's here to get me."

Eyes darting from his son back up to look out the windshield, Henry was surprised to see that the man was suddenly a lot closer to the truck, and that even in the glow of the streetlight, the man was still as much as a shadow before. Before he could even contemplate this, the man flickered the same way Shawn did and was suddenly directly in front of the truck.

"Run!" Shawn shouted, the passenger's side door somehow springing open all on its own.

"Wait!" Henry called, reaching out to grab Shawn, but his son was already out of the passenger's side door, running in the opposite direction of the man, and Henry was scrambling to open his own door to go after him. A few precious seconds passed by before Henry was out of the truck and standing on the gravel roadside. Shawn was still within his sights, running for all he was worth. Just as Henry began to turn and confront the man Shawn was so frightened of, a rush of cold passed by him and suddenly the dark form of the man was standing in front of Shawn, reaching down and grabbing hold of his collar.

"Dad!" Shawn shouted a second before he and the man disappeared in a flicker.

The streetlight stopped flickering and all was silent.

"Shawn?" Henry called out, somehow knowing he wouldn't receive an answer. He raced over to the spot his son had been only seconds before. "Shawn!"

He was gone, again, and Henry had no idea where he had been taken, _again._

Henry stumbled back to his truck, feeling like he was in a trance. This time when he turned the key in the ignition, the truck started up just fine, as if there had never been a problem to begin with. He didn't know how long he sat in his truck on the side of the road, but at some point he had closed both doors and had pulled back onto the road because when he finally started thinking again, he was well on his way home.

'_That man... that_ thing_, took my son,_' he thought, hands tightening around the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. '_It was able to take my truck out of commission the same way it affected those streetlights... God, what is going on?_'

As easy an option as it would be, he couldn't pass what just happened off as a wild hallucination. If there was even the slightest chance that any of this was real, he couldn't risk ignoring it, and if there was a chance that Shawn ended up back on the roads of the Los Padres National Forest, Henry would be there to get him. He'd find a way to combat whatever-the-hell that shadow man was, and if Shawn didn't end back up on the Forest's road, well...

_"I was in the woods."_

The Los Padres National Forest was a lot of forest to search through, but it was the best lead he had.

"Hell, if this is just me going insane, why not leap headfirst into the insanity?"

He'd sleep tonight, as everything was closed already, but come the next morning, he had some work to do.

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_End of chapter four. Hmm... I feel predictable with this chapter... *shrugs* Oh well._

_*(special note) - I don't live in California (yet *shifty eyes*), so I don't know how the roads around the Los Padres National Forest really are, if they're good for driving or not, so I'm just guessing about that._

_I hope you're all still enjoying this._

_Review please!_


	5. Chapter 5

_Hello everyone. Sorry for the delay, but I had finals to focus on. This chapter was also hard to write because Henry is such a skeptic, and I was having trouble finding a way to make the parts from his point-of-view believable enough. *sighs* Hopefully I pulled it off. Minor reference to "Let's Get Hairy." _

Disclaimer: I don't own Psych, nor do I own certain details belonging to Supernatural.

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**Chapter Five**

Henry was no stranger to internet search engines (something he was sure Shawn would be shocked to hear), but without much information about the situation to go on, he knew his time would be better spent checking out other sources rather than sifting through all the junk that flooded the internet. Instead, he checked out the library, trying to get a basic idea as to what he could be dealing with. It had been difficult at first, reading books about myths and different supernatural occurrences while trying to hold back the urge to scoff and pass it off as a load of crap. As much of a skeptic as he was though, all it took to keep him researching was that one memory of Shawn, the fear in his voice as he called out to Henry before that shadowed figure whisked him away to who knows where.

The library failed to yield many results. While they had books on the supernatural, they were more like a set of encyclopedias containing only descriptions on all the things that go bump in the night, descriptions that explained nothing about how one would actually defend against these monsters. Clearly the library was more sane than Henry and believed that such knowledge was not necessary since these creatures were not supposed to exist in the first place.

After that dead end, Henry briefly contemplated going to a church of some sort for advice before deciding that that would be a bad idea. He was then tempted to go ask Gus for help, but immediately dismissed that idea as well. Gus may know more about the supernatural, having believed in it for as long as Henry could remember, but Henry didn't want to put Gus through anymore grief and possibly get his hopes up about Shawn when there was a high chance that this whole thing was just him going crazy.

With no other leads to follow, and after much grumbling about how stupid this all was, Henry decided to check out the few small shops there were in Santa Barbara that specialized in all things supernatural, and this lead to him finding a place called, of all things, _Occultopus_. Like the previous shops he had checked out, it was the type of place only Shawn would have been able to get him to go into. It sold all sorts of things Henry didn't believe in, like voodoo dolls, charms, crystals, dream catchers and different types of herbs that were supposed to do something special, but it also had a wide selection of books. He ended up buying a few general books on different types of defense and quickly swept out of the shop before anyone could really strike up a conversation with him.

Hardly believing that he was even doing this ("It's to help Shawn. That's all that matters."), for the next week or so, Henry selected different protective symbols out of the books and put them to the test by drawing them on the hood of his truck with charcoal or chalk. Come nightfall, he'd go searching for Shawn, traveling the roads of the Los Padres National Forest.

The first night he had done this, he has worried that he wouldn't even find Shawn, that the whole thing really _had_ been some form of a mental breakdown. After a few hours of driving though, Shawn showed up on the side of the road, still in the occasionally flickering form of a brown dog, and not remembering a single thing about what happened just a few nights ago (a pattern Henry noticed the third time he picked Shawn up from the side of the road). After making a note of exactly where on the road it was that Henry was picking Shawn up at, he headed back to Santa Barbara with his son.

The shadowed form caught up to them a lot quicker that time, not even waiting until Henry reached Santa Barbara. The protective symbols had no effect, the truck suddenly breaking down just like before with Shawn being dragged off and disappearing in a violent flicker. Henry had been very tempted at the time to just go charging into the forest and see if he could find Shawn there, but he knew he had to be smart about this, and racing off into an unknown situation half-cocked wouldn't help anybody.

He headed home and was ready to try again with a different symbol, a different method, the following night and the night after that, and the night after that. Some nights, Shawn didn't show up on the side of the road and that was when Henry worried the most. The first time that happened, Henry feared that he had missed whatever chance he had been given before, that something permanent had happened to Shawn to prevent him from getting to the road. Henry eventually learned though that Shawn not showing up just meant that the circumstances of that night had gone differently, that perhaps some other person driving along the road had found Shawn before him, picking up what that person believed to be a lost dog and driving it to whatever destination they planned on driving to.

There had also been other nights, when Henry did manage to get to Shawn first only to be once again hunted down by the shadowed man, where Shawn had actually managed to outrun his pursuer. Henry didn't know where in Santa Barbara Shawn disappeared to those nights, but his son always ended up back on the roads of the Los Padres National Forest the next night, so Henry didn't spend too much time wondering. He had much more important things to worry about, such as the fact that nothing in the books he bought seemed to really have any effect.

Time and time again, he had to watch his son run away in fear from the shadowy form, calling out for help, and getting dragged away over and over again. It was a never-ending nightmare and Henry wasn't sure how much more of it he could take.

He eventually ended up back at the _Occultopus_ shop, finding it as good a place as any to vent his frustrations. He had demanded a refund for the books, calling the information useless and accusing the store and everything in it of being worthless crap. He was a bit surprised when the shop owner didn't get angry (a little disappointed too, a large part of him wanted someone he could yell at who would yell back). Instead, she asked him what his situation was, asked what it was he was trying to accomplish with the books he bought.

Understandably, he was wary of saying anything. He knew his situation sounded crazy and was a story that would not be easily believed. In response to his silence, the shop owner told him about her father who she believed to be a demon (in the literal sense), and although Henry didn't believe that story to be true for a second, he could tell that she honestly believed the story to be fact herself, and if she could believe a crazy story like that, why wouldn't she believe his own crazy story?

So Henry explained to her what happened, what he saw, and how none of the symbols in the books he bought worked for him. She was silent for a long while after he finished talking, her lips pulled down into a frown, and she went to go fetch two books off the shelves before finally giving him her expert opinion.

She believed he was dealing with ghosts. '_The signs match up,_' she told him; an unstable form, cold spots and lingering chills, electrical disturbances, disappearing and re-appearing. She handed him two books on ghosts and spirits, letting him have them in exchange for the previous books he bought that didn't work even though the ghost books cost more, and told him to come back if he had anymore trouble.

He took the two new books but didn't look at them, instead leaving them on his living room coffee table. Several days of denial passed. He never would have guessed that he'd reach a point in his life where he'd be having a serious internal debate over whether something was a ghost or not. Yet here he was, agonizing over the possibilities in-between brief glances cast at two books on ghosts. He could accept that the shadowy figure he had been unsuccessfully fighting against for weeks now was a ghost, but Shawn?

Believing something like that, that Shawn was just a ghost now, would mean that they were too late to save him, that all that is left to do would be to recover the body of his only child. It just wasn't something Henry was ready to accept.

'_So then don't accept it,_' his mind finally told him. '_Just fight off that shadowed bastard as if _it's_ a ghost and deal with everything else later. You at least owe Shawn that much._'

It was a convincing enough argument and it finally got Henry to skim through the two books. He skipped past chapters on meditation, stabilizing your emotions, and other things of the sort, and instead focused on physical forms of defense, noting the consistencies between the two books. Salt and iron were commonly used as a way to ward off and protect against ghosts and other supernatural things of the sort. For example, lining the doors and windows of one's house with salt will keep spirits out. There were also different protection symbols in the books that could be used. It all seemed ridiculous, almost too simple, but it was worth a try.

He bought bags of salt and covered every possible point of entrance in his house, leaving the front door clear for now so that he could add the salt lines once he came back through. He bought scraps of iron and duct-taped it to the grill of his truck, and he drew out the protection symbols onto the inside of the truck's hood.

Henry headed out as night approached and quickly located Shawn near the same area he was always wandering around in. He turned on the radio as he began driving back, hoping the music would distract Shawn so that he could keep all his focus on the road, watching out for their shadowy hunter.

They eventually left the forest behind and were traveling the streets of Santa Barbara when it happened. The radio fizzled out and the streetlights flickered, but the truck kept running. Henry's hands tightened on the wheel. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Shawn duck down in his seat, ears pressed flat against his head, clearly sensing that something was off.

Far ahead of them at the end of the street, the shadow man appeared. Shawn whimpered quietly, sounding so very dog-like that Henry had to remind himself that that was his son sitting there and not an animal.

"Shawn," Henry said, his tone stern and commanding while at the same time promising protection. "Whatever you do, don't get out of this truck. Not until I say so."

He stepped down on the gas and the truck plowed forward, heading straight for the man standing ahead of them. The shadowy man flickered, but didn't move. An inhumane shriek echoed through the static of the radio, but it stopped the second his truck hit their hunter. The man disappeared in wisps of dark smoke as the iron on the trucks grill did its job.

After many twists and turns and one more encounter with their apparently ghostly pursuer, for the first time in so many months, Henry brought Shawn safely home. Once in the driveway, he bolted out of his truck, calling for Shawn to follow, and quickly corralled his son in through the front door. Closing the door behind himself, Henry lined it with salt and effectively sealed off the house. He grabbed an iron fire poker he had previously set aside at the front door and held it at the ready, waiting to see if the salt lines were as effective as the books claimed them to be. An unsettling silence fell over the house, broken only by the sound of his heavy breathing and the quiet shuffling noises of Shawn moving around behind him.

"Dad?"

"Shhh!" Henry hissed, tightening his grip on the fire poker.

The street lights began flickering outside and the windows rattled loudly, as if they were being pounded on by fists, yet the one light Henry had on in the living room was unaffected and the door remained firmly closed. Henry held back a flinch as another inhumane scream rang out, sounding muffled through the windows which continued to rattle so violently that for a moment, Henry worried they might shatter.

Thankfully, the windows held, and with one last frustrated scream, the rattling died off and the flickering lights returned to normal. Muscles still tense, Henry waited several more minutes in the silence of the night with the fire poker raised and ready to swing. When nothing further happened though, he let himself relax just a little.

Lowering the fire poker, Henry turned to where Shawn stood behind him and wondered, '_Now what? _'

He had gotten Shawn home, kind of, _in a way_, yet at the same time not completely. Assuming for a moment that he wasn't just going crazy, Henry couldn't exactly go in to the police station and tell them to call off the search, that he had found Shawn. It wasn't that simple.

'_Nothing's ever simple with Shawn,_' Henry thought to himself.

Whether it was completely Shawn, or a manifestation of Shawn, or who the hell knows what, Henry couldn't just go back to his life as if everything was back to normal. Things were _far_ from normal because apparently ghosts were real and his son not only thought he was a dog, he _was_, by all appearances, a dog. How does one even begin to figure out how any of that is possible?

Shawn flickered, but otherwise gave away no answers.

'_Well,_' Henry thought with a mental sigh, '_if this was a normal situation, the next step would be to figure out who took Shawn and bring that person to justice._'

"Going to need coffee for this," Henry muttered to himself as he glanced at a clock. It was almost midnight. Speaking more loudly to address his son, Henry said, "Shawn, why don't you go into the living room while I-"

What if he disappeared while his back was turned, or what if that shadow man somehow got inside and snatched Shawn while he wasn't looking?

"Er... Never mind. Just stick with me while I go into the kitchen," he said instead.

"Okay," Shawn said after a short pause, looking as confused as a dog can look by the request. The fact that he didn't question why or voice any form of protest didn't sit right with Henry. It wasn't at all like Shawn to simply do as he was told, yet here he was being so very obedient. It was unsettling.

Henry brewed a large pot of coffee, knowing that he wouldn't be getting much sleep, if any at all, not with the thought that Shawn could be gone when he woke up drifting through his head. When he had his cup of coffee in hand, he settled down on the living room couch and watched as Shawn restlessly paced around the coffee table in front of him.

"Dad," Shawn said, finally speaking up. "How did you keep him out? I mean, is he going to stay out?"

"I suppose you could say I found the right type of protection against him," Henry said, not really wanting to get into the whole ghost thing. He frowned as his eyes followed Shawn's pacing. Patting the couch cushion next to him, Henry said, "Shawn, come sit down."

His ears lowering, Shawn stopped his pacing and hopped up onto the couch. Fear and nervousness radiated off of him. He looked so completely pitiful and helpless that Henry had a sudden urge to pet him on the head, like one might an actual dog, but it wasn't a dog sitting next to him, it was his son, and it would take more than a simple '_good boy_' to make him feel better.

"It's going to be okay son," Henry said. "You're safe here, okay?"

"I... yeah, okay," Shawn said quietly, looking away.

Henry geared himself up for what he was about to ask next. He really didn't want to do it, as it was obvious that Shawn wasn't ready to be talking about whatever may have happened to him, but it had to be done. Granted, he could wait until Shawn was at least settled down, but he really didn't know how long of an opportunity he'd have to even be able to talk to Shawn, and he didn't want to miss his chance.

"Shawn, where have you been these past eight months? Where did they take you?" he asked.

Hazel eyes snapped over to Henry, startled by the question, and Shawn stumbled over his words for a moment before answering, "I was in the forest, in a cabin, near where you found me. I don't know who took me, he never gave me his name, just..." Shawn trailed off with a haunted look in his eyes. Shaking his head, he continued, "I really don't want to talk about this, dad. It... it doesn't matter anyway. There's something else, something more important..."

"Something you can't remember," Henry said, recalling all the times before when Shawn said something like that.

"Yeah," Shawn said quietly. "I just woke up in the forest tonight and I can't remember how I got there, how I... got away... "

Henry frowned as he asked, "What's the last thing you remembered?"

He was almost afraid to know the answer.

"I don't know," Shawn said, sounding frustrated. He closed his eyes, just as he usually did when trying to remember something. After a moment of silence, he finally said, "I was.. I was running." he sounded confused. Opening his eyes, he looked back up at Henry and said, "but I was always running. I don't understand how this is any different."

Shawn slumped down on the couch, resting his head on his front paws, and looked off into a corner of the room. A quiet growl rumbled in his throat as he mumbled to himself, "Running, running... What else? There's got to be more to it than that."

"Shawn, I need more to go on than that," Henry said after his son trailed off into silence. "If I'm to help you, I need to know what else happened at that cabin."

He really didn't want to know though, didn't want to hear all the gruesome details about what happened to his son during the eight months he had been kidnapped. It was one of the reasons why cops didn't take cases that involved family or close friends. It was too personal. Henry would much rather send Shawn to talk it all out with a therapist, but that just wasn't an option right now.

"I said I don't want to talk about it," Shawn literally growled, his hackles raised and his teeth bared. The ferocious look vanished just as quickly as it came and Shawn fearfully shrank back against the corner of the couch. Henry could only watch on in stunned silence as Shawn apologized. Never before had his son looked so afraid of him, and he hadn't even had a chance to react to being growled at.

'_Growled at, literally growled at by my son._'

Shawn hopped down from the couch, and as he retreated from the room, Henry called after him, "Where are you going?"

"I just want to go to my room," Shawn said quietly, miserably, as he stood at the threshold of the stairs.

"No, Shawn, wait," Henry said as gently as he could, standing up from the couch. He didn't want to let Shawn out of his sight. "Come back. We don't have to talk about it right now. We can just..." he searched his mind, "..watch TV."

A pointed furry ear twitched as paws took a cautious step back towards the living room.

"Come on," Henry said, grabbing the remote of the coffee table. "Let's see what's on."

Henry's eyes stayed on Shawn as he turned on the television and sat back down on the couch. For several minutes, Shawn didn't move from his spot by the stairs and seemed to examine the couch and everything around it, as if searching for some sort of hidden ambush. Apparently deeming it safe, Shawn slowly made his way over to the couch and settled down on the floor near Henry's leg. When Shawn ignored Henry's attempts to actually come up and sit on the couch (like a person), Henry decided to just let it go for now and turned part of his attention on the television.

'_Maybe some normalcy will do him some good,_' Henry thought.

He must have drifted off at some point because when he woke up, the first rays of the morning sun were just barely shining through the window. His eyes immediately darted over to where he last saw Shawn, partly expecting him to be gone again. Shawn was still there though, sitting in the same spot he had been in the previous night. He flickered once, but was still there, safe and sound.

'_We made it through the night,_' Henry thought with a relieved sigh. '_The sun's up and he's still here._'

Shawn flickered once more, but otherwise didn't move. He looked almost frozen in place, his eyes glazed over and staring unseeingly in the direction of the television. Henry followed his line of sight and saw that an infomercial about pots and pans of some sort was playing on the screen.

His eyes drifting back over to Shawn, Henry frowned and called out, "Shawn?"

Shawn didn't move, didn't blink, just flickered a third time.

"Shawn?" Henry called again, reaching a hand out to his son.

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_ ._

_Shawn ran a hand over his cheek (_A hand? No. A paw? That didn't seem right either._), wondering just how much energy he should put into being creeped-out by the fact that his captor had once again shaved off his beard while he was in yet another drugged stupor. There were plenty of other much more creepy things happening to him right now because of his captor that Shawn, for the most part, decided that he shouldn't waste his time being weirded-out by his most recent grooming._

_That didn't stop a shudder from running up his spine at the word 'grooming' though._

_It had been several days since his captor decided he was 'ready,' but other than making that announcement, nothing else had happened since then. He hadn't even been taken out on another 'hunt,' and he was becoming even more jumpy and stressed out than usual just waiting for the other shoe to drop._

_It was dinner time, and while his captor cooked up something hot in a pan on the stove, Shawn was stuck with dry kibble. The intoxicating scent of delicious people food wafted past his nose and made his mouth water. Shawn swallowed thickly and watched as his captor left whatever it was cooking on the stove and grabbed something from a nearby drawer. It appeared to be two stripes of fabric, silk from the looks of it; one a solid gold color, and the other a gray color with some sort of silver design embroidered in one corner that looked like a paw print._

_"Ribbons," the man said._

_Shawn's gaze snapped up to his captor's face and his heart thudded in his chest as the man walked up to the cage._

_"It's why I named you what I did," the man said. "To motivate you. These will be what you're after."_

_He waved the two ribbons in front of the cage._

_"Don't bother so much with the gold one. A dog never gets the gold one," the man said. "What you need to focus on is the gray."_

_It was a combination of things that made him do it. Stress, anger, hunger, fear, exhaustion, it all built up inside of him until finally, when the man reached through the bars of the cage to dangle the gray ribbon in front of his face, Shawn found himself sinking his teeth into the man's hand. Really, Shawn was surprised it didn't happen sooner, and the man really did have it coming, but there's something to be said for not biting the hand that feeds you, especially when that hand also beats you and wields a gun to shoot at you._

_Pulling his hand free, the man grabbed hold of Shawn's collar and slammed his head up against the bars of the cage. Dazed from the blow, Shawn could only sit slumped against the cage while the man used the gray ribbon to tie his collar to one of the cage's bars, effectively pinning him in place. Shaking off his dizziness, Shawn scrabbled with the ribbon, trying to untie the knot as he watched his captor angrily stomp over to the stove. The man grabbed the hot pan by its handle and dumped its contents into the sink._

_Shawn's hands shook as he struggled with the ribbon, but without being able to see what he was doing, he couldn't get it untied. His eyes widened as his captor came back over with the hot pan in hand. Kneeling down next to Shawn, the man's fingers wrapped around one of Shawn's wrists with an iron grip and pulled his hand away from the ribbon._

_"No, no, no, no, no," Shawn pleaded fearfully. "Please no. I'm sorry!"_

_A blood-curdling scream tore free from Shawn's throat as the man pressed his hand flat against the hot pan, palm down, with the hot juices of whatever it was that had been cooking dripping over his flesh. Shawn pulled his hand back through the bars when the man finally let go, wincing as he automatically curled his hand into a fist, only to scream again when his captor pressed his other hand against the hot pan._

_His captor hadn't said a word throughout the punishment, and he didn't say a word to Shawn for the rest of the night. He just left Shawn there, tied up against the cage with only his water dish nearby to sooth his burnt hands, and didn't untie him until late the next morning. _

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"Shawn?"

Shawn blinked, snapping out of his flashback, and immediately flinched away from the hand resting on his back.

"Didn't mean to startle you," Henry said, pulling his hand back. "You just weren't responding for a minute there."

Shawn stared up at his father for a moment, confused, before his eyes took in the rest of his surroundings.

'_That's right,_' Shawn thought to himself. '_Dad found me and brought me back home. He kept that man away from me too._'

It was then that he noticed the sun rising through the window. There was nothing really spectacular about this particular sunrise, but for some reason Shawn felt like it held some sort of strange significance, almost like it was unusual to even be seeing it at all. The next sensation that came over him was the feeling that he needed to leave, and it was this feeling that lead him over to the front door. He had never been a big fan about hanging around at his dad's house all day, but it felt especially important now that he go out and do something.

He stared down at the line of salt, remembering how his dad had poured it in front of the door the night before. Shaking his head at the unusual site of the salt, Shawn's gaze traveled up to the doorknob and his ears pulled back irritably.

"Shawn?"

"Dad, open the door," Shawn said, looking over his shoulder.

There was a long pause before Henry finally responded with, "It's safe in here, Shawn. That shadow thing can't get in here. I can't protect you if I let you outside."

"I can't stay here all day," Shawn said. "I have to go out and do... something."

"What could you possibly need to do?" Henry asked.

"I don't know," Shawn said, shaking his head. "Something... important. I need to try and remember. Maybe look for clues, maybe find something that will help me remember."

Shawn watched as his dad got up and paced around the living room, seeming to have an internal debate with himself. For some reason, Henry took a moment to stare out the window. Shawn didn't know what he was looking at, but apparently whatever it was that he saw helped him come to a decision.

Grabbing a fire poker that had been resting on the ground near the door, Henry said, "Step back for a minute."

Eyeing the fire poker in Henry's hand, Shawn stepped away from the door. It wasn't that he was worried about his dad hitting him with the fire poker, but the way he was holding it, like it was a weapon, made Shawn nervous. Seeming to take a moment to compose himself, Henry slid the line of salt away with his foot before opening the door. Light streamed in through the front door, but that was all that happened. Henry lowered the fire poker.

"If I let you go out there, you have to promise me one thing," Henry said as he turned to look down at Shawn.

Shawn tilted his head to the side curiously and asked, "What's that?"

"Come back here before it gets dark," Henry said. "I don't quite understand what's going on right now, but I do know that if that man doesn't come after you during the day, he'll most likely come back during the night."

Shawn's ears lowered as he remembered the fear he felt the previous night when that man followed them back home.

"Okay," Shawn agreed quietly.

Stepping to the side of the door, Henry held it open and as Shawn stepped out into the morning light, Henry said, "Be careful."

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Henry watched as Shawn raced off down the street. He didn't quite know why he let Shawn leave the house, and for a moment he contemplated going after him, maybe even following him in his truck just to make sure he would be okay. Still, he knew they wouldn't be moving forward in any way if he just kept Shawn locked up in his house. Besides, Shawn wanted to leave. Maybe he knew something Henry didn't, even if he didn't quite remember what that something was.

"If that thing does get him again and he doesn't come back tonight, I'll just go out and get him again."

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The sand shifted under Juliet's feet as she jogged along the beach that morning. Juliet had started jogging every few mornings a week before work several months back, not too long after Shawn disappeared, when she discovered that it was a good way for her to relax and burn off extra stress (time spent at the shooting range worked too, but jogging was quieter). As Juliet took in the beauty of the beach around her and let her mind go clear, she noticed the sound of footsteps to her left. Looking over and then down, Juliet was a bit surprised to see a brown dog trotting along beside her.

Smiling down at the dog, Juliet said, "Hey there, buddy."

The dog looked up at her with smiling eyes, his ears flopping in the wind.

Then he opened his mouth and said, using Shawn's voice, "Jules!"

Eyes widening, Juliet tripped over her own feet and went tumbling to the ground with a yelp.

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* * *

_That's all for this chapter. I don't know why, but I'm not too happy with this chapter. Hopefully it's just me being my own worst critic._

_Review please and tell me what you think! Happy New Year! _


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